At­tor­ney CJ Williams plans to write to the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) and Law As­so­ci­a­tion (LATT), call­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, af­ter what he called a trou­bling vis­it to Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, yes­ter­day.

Williams claimed he was told he had to be blind­fold­ed in or­der to con­sul­ta with client Earl Richards, one of the men charged in the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal SC, who is now be­ing de­tained on the army base un­der the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

In let­ters be­ing dis­patched to­day to CBA head Is­rael Khan, SC, and LATT pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite, Williams de­scribes the con­di­tions he faced dur­ing a vis­it to the De­fence Force-con­trolled site as a breach of at­tor­ney-client priv­i­lege. He said it was “a sad day in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the guise of a State of Emer­gency.”

He said be­fore he could see his client, he was he had to agree to sev­er­al con­di­tions.

“No elec­tron­ics, fine. Pen and pa­per on­ly — ac­cept­able. But then, they said I had to be blind­fold­ed be­cause of the ‘na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat’ of the site,” Williams said at his Port-of-Spain of­fice.

Williams, who ad­mit­ted to be­ing claus­tro­pho­bic, said he re­luc­tant­ly agreed to the blind­fold. But he claimed more trou­bling de­mands fol­lowed: he was told five masked men in full black tac­ti­cal gear would re­main in the room.

“That’s not a le­gal vis­it. That’s an in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tic,” Williams said.

“I was fur­ther warned that if any­thing I said could be ‘de­cod­ed’ as a sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage, the in­ter­view would be im­me­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.”

He said he re­fused to pro­ceed un­der those terms and was or­dered to leave. The of­fi­cers, he said, de­clined to pro­vide names or reg­i­men­tal num­bers.

Williams said he lat­er con­tact­ed le­gal coun­sel for the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, who, he claimed, re­spond­ed on­ly to say that of­fi­cers were vis­i­ble but un­able to hear the con­sul­ta­tion. He said the blind­fold­ing and the so-called sub­lim­i­nal mes­sag­ing pol­i­cy were un­ad­dressed.

“We’re not at war. This is not Guan­tanamo. This is Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Williams said.

“For a lawyer to be asked to sur­ren­der his rights and blind­fold him­self just to speak with a client should alarm every cit­i­zen, not just the le­gal com­mu­ni­ty.”

He said he was deeply dis­turbed by the ap­par­ent mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the de­ten­tion process.
Williams called on the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of De­fence, a trained crim­i­nal at­tor­ney, to im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Williams said le­gal re­course is an op­tion but stressed his im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is se­cur­ing ac­cess to his client un­der ap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions.

“Right now, my mis­sion is sim­ple: speak to my client with­out masks, blind­folds, or threats,” he said. “Un­til that hap­pens, this coun­try is in dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry.”