AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Two days af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) is­sued against dance­hall artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Ol­liviere on Au­gust 24, his at­tor­neys filed an ur­gent bail ap­pli­ca­tion in the Port-of-Spain High Court, along with a re­quest for an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing.

Al­though the PDO has been re­voked, Ol­liviere, of 18th Street, Beetham Gar­dens, re­mains in cus­tody on a charge of il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ing elec­tric­i­ty.

Bail was de­nied at his last court ap­pear­ance on May 15, and he was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody un­til No­vem­ber 13. How­ev­er, his at­tor­neys, Criston Williams and Se­le­na Mo­hammed, ar­gued that the re­vo­ca­tion of the PDO con­sti­tutes a ma­te­r­i­al change in cir­cum­stances that war­rants a fresh as­sess­ment of his el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for bail and the pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

De­scrib­ing the mat­ter as ur­gent, the le­gal team said Ol­liviere con­tin­ues to be de­prived of his lib­er­ty while await­ing a hear­ing sev­er­al months away. They ar­gued that the PDO re­vo­ca­tion was a sig­nif­i­cant and legal­ly rel­e­vant de­vel­op­ment that ma­te­ri­al­ly al­tered the risk as­sess­ment pre­vi­ous­ly be­fore the court, as the ad­min­is­tra­tive ba­sis on which he was de­tained or re­strict­ed is no longer in force.

The at­tor­neys al­so cit­ed Ol­liviere’s planned in­volve­ment in the Medz Boss: Wis­dom Su­per­hero Peace Plat­form, an ini­tia­tive be­ing de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Quan­tum Foun­da­tion.

The ap­pli­ca­tion said the pro­gramme is de­signed to chan­nel Ol­liviere’s cul­tur­al in­flu­ence in­to struc­tured, ac­count­able and peace-fo­cused ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing youth en­gage­ment projects, pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, artiste round-ta­ble dis­cus­sions and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives.

Ol­liviere has asked the court to con­sid­er the ex­is­tence of the Peace Plat­form as a rel­e­vant fac­tor in as­sess­ing both risk and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty.

Sup­port­ing this, his at­tor­neys said: “It pro­vides a con­struc­tive and su­per­vised frame­work through which the Ap­pli­cant can demon­strate dis­ci­pline, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, law­ful com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, and pos­i­tive pub­lic in­flu­ence while re­main­ing sub­ject to any con­di­tions im­posed by this Ho­n­ourable Court.”

They fur­ther ar­gued that if the court deems ad­di­tion­al safe­guards nec­es­sary, Ol­liviere is will­ing to have his bail re­viewed af­ter three months.

“The Ap­pli­cant fur­ther ac­cepts that, should the re­port af­ter three months be un­sat­is­fac­to­ry, or should he fail to com­ply with any con­di­tion of bail, the Ho­n­ourable Court may re­voke bail and re­mand the Ap­pli­cant in­to cus­tody, sub­ject al­ways to the Court’s dis­cre­tion and the ap­plic­a­ble law,” the ap­pli­ca­tion stat­ed.

Ol­liviere al­so main­tained that while the charge of il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ing elec­tric­i­ty is a se­ri­ous mat­ter, it is not one for which pre-tri­al de­ten­tion should be re­gard­ed as in­evitable.

His at­tor­neys ar­gued that any de­pri­va­tion of lib­er­ty must be law­ful, nec­es­sary, ra­tio­nal and pro­por­tion­ate. They con­tend­ed that where bail con­di­tions can ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress any per­ceived risks, con­tin­ued de­ten­tion be­comes in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy.

The le­gal team al­so said Ol­liviere is be­ing held at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa un­der over­crowd­ed con­di­tions. They claimed the sit­u­a­tion was “caused or ma­te­ri­al­ly ag­gra­vat­ed by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s is­suance of a sub­stan­tial num­ber of PDOs with­in a short pe­ri­od, with­out en­sur­ing that suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tion, san­i­ta­tion, ven­ti­la­tion, and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices were avail­able for the re­sult­ing de­tainee pop­u­la­tion.”