Police have until midday today to charge a police officer suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of Natalie Pollonais.
The 24-hour deadline was set yesterday afternoon by High Court Judge Margaret Mohammed, after she upheld a habeas corpus application challenging the officer’s protracted detention without being charged. The officer’s name has to be withheld until he is charged with a criminal offence.
Presenting submissions at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, yesterday afternoon, the officer’s lawyers, Shiva Boodoo and Roshni Balkaran, explained that their client was arrested at the La Romaine Police Post hours after Pollonais was recused by police.
Boodoo said during his over 200 hours of detention, the officer was only questioned once for three hours over Pollonais’ abduction. He was questioned a second time but over another kidnapping. Boodoo suggested that police had not been able to gather sufficient evidence against his client during the period.
“They (the police) have traversed the length and breadth of the investigation...It seems that there is no way forward for the investigation,” Boodoo said.
He claimed while investigators were taking their time, his client was forced to endure poor conditions in the holding cell of a police station.
“He (the officer) is just languishing in the cells and spending nights on cold concrete,” he said.
Saying the officer is not a flight risk as he does not have a valid passport, Boodoo said he could have been released and rearrested by police at the end of their investigation.
Responding to the submissions, Office of the Attorney General attorneys denied the police’s investigation had stalled. They claimed investigators would be ready to make a decision after they receive voice recognition analysis on recorded telephone conversations gathered during the inquiry.
After listening to the submissions, Mohammed agreed to grant the requested extension. However, she said he should be immediately released once he is not charged by noon today. As part of her ruling, Mohammed ordered the State to pay the officer’s $5,000 legal costs for bringing the application.
The officer, who is from Marabella, was surrounded by heavily armed police during the hearing and was positioned metres away from where his elderly parents sat.
In the event that he is charged, the officer would be the third person to be implicated for Pollonais’ kidnapping.
On Tuesday, 24-year-old Special Reserve Police (SRP) Shaundelle Euin, who was also last assigned to the La Romain Police Post and 50-year-old La Brea welder Gregory James appeared in court charged with kidnapping for ransom. Both were denied bail when they reappeared in court yesterday.
Pollonais, the wife of Jason Pollonais, a director of the South Oropouche-based Inland and Offshore Contractors Ltd (IOCL) was kidnapped on September 6 at SS Erin Road, Debe, after she left C3 Centre in Ste Madeleine. On that night, police found her BMW 5308 hybrid sedan abandoned in the parking lot of an HDC apartment building at Cypress Hills, Union Hall. The kidnappers contacted her family and demanded a ransom for her return.
Pollonais was rescued on the night of September 10 after police intercepted a white Nissan AD Wagon along the Churchill Roosevelt Highway near Courts Mega Store.
The matter will next be heard via video conference on October 16.