One day af­ter the State was or­dered to pay $.4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to a man ar­rest­ed dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) on gang-re­lat­ed charges, the State has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to ap­peal.Kevin Stew­art won his claim for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion stem­ming from his ar­rest un­der the An­ti Gang Leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the 2011 SoE.

Rul­ing in his favour on Tues­day, Jus­tice Joan Charles found that the po­lice had no ev­i­dence and fab­ri­cat­ed the case against Stew­art.A re­lease from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al yes­ter­day stat­ed: "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of T&T has been ad­vised by his at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing em­i­nent Se­nior Coun­sel, that there are sub­stan­tial grounds for ap­peal. In the cir­cum­stances, a No­tice of Ap­peal will soon be filed seek­ing the ur­gent hear­ing of this mat­ter."

Stew­art was ar­rest­ed and charged with be­ing a gang mem­ber in­volved in traf­fick­ing nar­cotics in Au­gust 2011. How­ev­er, the State dis­con­tin­ued the case a month lat­er be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.In the hard-hit­ting judg­ment, Charles ac­cused ASP Mo­hammed and ACP Fred­er­ick of "gross dere­lic­tion of du­ty," and a ju­nior of­fi­cer "of ly­ing and of hav­ing an im­prop­er mo­tive for ar­rest­ing Stew­art."

Stew­art was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram.