JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The State of Emer­gency (SoE) tri­bunal is ex­pect­ed to sub­mit a re­port to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on the de­ten­tion of prison su­per­vi­sor Garth Gua­da, af­ter meet­ing on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.

Last week, Gua­da threat­ened to sue the State over his de­ten­tion, claim­ing that Alexan­der de­tained him based on a per­son­al vendet­ta against him, af­ter Gua­da re­port­ed to se­nior po­lice and prison of­fi­cials that Alexan­der had al­leged clan­des­tine meet­ings with gang­sters in be­fore his po­lit­i­cal as­cen­sion.

San­jiv Bood­hu and Krys­tal Primus rep­re­sent­ed Gua­da be­fore the tri­bunal yes­ter­day. The at­tor­neys sub­mit­ted that Gua­da’s de­ten­tion was re­voked on Sep­tem­ber 3 and an­oth­er was ini­ti­at­ed a day lat­er. The at­tor­neys claimed that the day de­lay could have giv­en the rea­son­able ob­serv­er the inkling that the State was un­sure of what to do with Gua­da.

The re­voked de­ten­tion or­der can­celled his de­ten­tion at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa, while the sub­se­quent de­ten­tion or­der re­lo­cat­ed him to Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas. The at­tor­neys sub­mit­ted that the State could have eas­i­ly trans­ferred him with­out hav­ing to cre­ate two de­ten­tion or­ders.

Yes­ter­day’s hear­ing came as the at­tor­neys filed a habeas cor­pus last week, claim­ing that they were un­able to re­ceive in­struc­tions from their client. Gua­da was present vir­tu­al­ly at yes­ter­day’s hear­ing.

In re­sponse, the State, rep­re­sent­ed by Lester Chari­at, con­tend­ed that Gua­da’s de­ten­tion is nec­es­sary.

Gua­da was de­tained for al­leged­ly as­sist­ing gang­sters both in­side and out­side prison dur­ing and pri­or to the Ju­ly 18 SoE.

The tri­bunal did not give a date on when they will sub­mit their re­port.

No mat­ter what their de­ci­sion is, how­ev­er, Alexan­der has the pow­er to ve­to the find­ings of the re­port.

David Alexan­der, Kent Sam­lal, and Shiv­an­gelie Ra­moutar were ap­point­ed to the tri­bunal on Ju­ly 21. Ear­li­er this month, how­ev­er, Sam­lal re­signed af­ter is­sues over his ap­point­ment were raised by an­oth­er SoE de­tainee, Ra­jaee Ali. Ma­jor Ar­den Williams was ap­point­ed to take Sam­lal’s place.