Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for due process to be fol­lowed in the wake of the ar­rests of Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed own­er Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve, amid grow­ing pub­lic scruti­ny sur­round­ing the mat­ter.

The cou­ple was ar­rest­ed on Wednes­day, al­though de­tails sur­round­ing the ar­rests re­main un­clear.

While Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed that the ar­rests had tak­en place, ques­tions about the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the ac­tion went unan­swered, in­clud­ing dur­ing a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day where the ar­rests were an­nounced.

The ar­rests have al­so sparked po­lit­i­cal de­bate, as it came weeks af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed a warn­ing by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent,” was be­yond the reach of the law.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day, even as no charges had yet been laid against the Hadeeds, Beck­les said her pri­ma­ry con­cern was en­sur­ing that le­gal pro­ce­dures were prop­er­ly fol­lowed.

“The main thing for me is to en­sure that there is due process and that the law takes its course be­cause oth­er than what I’ve seen in the press, I don’t have any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion,” Beck­les said.

She not­ed that the ar­rests were un­fold­ing against the back­drop of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency and a se­ries of con­tentious na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures that have dom­i­nat­ed pub­lic dis­cus­sion in re­cent months.

Beck­les re­called that Op­po­si­tion MPs had lis­tened to state­ments made in Par­lia­ment by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­cern­ing the coun­try’s wealth­i­est cit­i­zens and al­le­ga­tions link­ing mem­bers of the busi­ness elite to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We sat in the Par­lia­ment, my oth­er three col­leagues here and heard the state­ments made by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as it re­lates to the one per cent, even as it re­lates to clas­si­fy­ing them as a gang,” she said.

She said the Op­po­si­tion would await fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from the au­thor­i­ties be­fore draw­ing con­clu­sions on the mat­ter.

“So that we await, as for all oth­er cas­es of peo­ple that have been go­ing through this process, to hear from the Gov­ern­ment, to pro­vide the ap­pro­pri­ate state­ments, and our main con­cern is to en­sure due process,” Beck­les added.