Al­leged gang leader Ra­jaee Ali has evad­ed a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge to his law­suit over be­ing trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca to mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

When Ali’s case came up for hear­ing on Wednes­day, lawyers for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­quest­ed that Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son con­sid­er whether he should be grant­ed leave to pur­sue the case be­fore analysing the sub­stan­tive is­sues raised by his le­gal team, led by Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers.

They claimed that Ali had not raised a valid case with a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at an even­tu­al tri­al, as he was cur­rent­ly be­ing de­tained un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions for the SoE and not a re­mand war­rant un­der which he was first trans­ferred.

Ramkhal­whan re­quest­ed that Jus­tice Robert­son de­cide the case in a rolled-up hear­ing, in which she would con­sid­er whether Ali had raised an ar­guable case and the sub­stan­tive con­cerns raised by him si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Jus­tice Robert­son agreed and or­dered the rolled-up hear­ing.

She set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and writ­ten sub­mis­sions and ad­journed the case to Jan­u­ary 22 for the par­ties to present oral sub­mis­sions.

Ali was trans­ferred at the start of the SoE in mid-Ju­ly.

He filed sev­er­al cas­es af­ter he was ini­tial­ly de­nied ac­cess to his le­gal team, but the cas­es were dis­con­tin­ued af­ter ac­cess was even­tu­al­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed.

In his court fil­ings, Ali’s lawyers claimed that at the time of his trans­fer, the T&T Reg­i­ment’s Teteron Bar­racks and the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay base in Ch­aguara­mas were de­clared dis­trict pris­ons un­der the Pris­ons Act.

Ali’s lawyers claimed that his ini­tial trans­fer was un­law­ful as such fa­cil­i­ties are in­tend­ed for con­vict­ed per­sons serv­ing short sen­tences and not re­mand pris­on­ers like Ali, who are await­ing tri­al.

“The First In­tend­ed Re­spon­dent (Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er) had no statu­to­ry pow­er to trans­fer a first di­vi­sion pris­on­er to a dis­trict prison and the said de­ci­sion is un­law­ful,” they said.

They not­ed that af­ter the le­gal is­sue was point­ed out by them, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der is­sued an­oth­er or­der de­clar­ing both fa­cil­i­ties as pris­ons as op­posed to dis­trict pris­ons.

“The retroac­tive des­ig­na­tion of the Teteron Bar­racks as a prison does not af­fect whether the de­ci­sion to trans­fer on Ju­ly 18 is un­law­ful or not,” they said.

They not­ed that in Au­gust, their client was trans­ferred to an­oth­er cell with four pris­on­ers.

They claimed that the sec­ond trans­fer was in­tend­ed to pun­ish Ali for pur­su­ing lit­i­ga­tion.

“The In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant sub­mits that the trans­fer on Au­gust 8, 2025, con­tin­ues to re­strict and/or frus­trate his right to ef­fec­tive­ly, ad­e­quate­ly, and prop­er­ly in­struct an at­tor­ney-at-law while de­tained at a cell in Ch­aguara­mas and the de­ci­sion to trans­fer is there­fore un­law­ful,” they said.

They claimed that al­though they were in­formed that a de­ten­tion or­der had been is­sued in re­la­tion to Ali, such was nev­er of­fi­cial­ly served on him.

Through the law­suit, Ali is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over his trans­fers and an or­der com­pelling his trans­fer back to a suit­able prison fa­cil­i­ty.

Ali is cur­rent­ly await­ing tri­al with 10 mem­bers of his al­leged gang for mur­der­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, on May 4, 2014.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Jared Ja­groo, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, while the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan.

Al­though Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, leads Ja­groo, and Ian Ben­jamin, SC, leads Ramb­ha­jan, nei­ther was present for the hear­ing.

Ali was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by An­war Ho­sein.