A sol­dier who was placed un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) af­ter be­ing charged with re­ceiv­ing and har­bour­ing a Venezue­lan woman for ex­ploita­tion has been grant­ed $350,000 bail.

Ti­tus Du Bois, 41, of Pe­tit Val­ley, ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mas­ter Guer­ra Abra­ham in the Port-of-Spain Mas­ter Court on Au­gust 21.

Du Bois is charged with re­ceiv­ing and har­bour­ing a Venezue­lan na­tion­al who al­leged­ly en­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go il­le­gal­ly for the pur­pose of ex­ploita­tion. The charge was laid by PC Moore of the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit.

Po­lice ar­rest­ed Du Bois on Ju­ly 22 af­ter in­ter­cept­ing a blue Hon­da City along Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James. He was off du­ty at the time.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors sub­se­quent­ly searched his Pe­tit Val­ley home un­der a war­rant and seized sev­er­al items, in­clud­ing an iPad and cel­lu­lar phones.

Ac­cord­ing to the PDO, in­tel­li­gence sources iden­ti­fied Du Bois as the al­leged leader of an or­gan­ised hu­man traf­fick­ing net­work op­er­at­ing be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The or­der al­leged that he co­or­di­nat­ed the re­cep­tion of peo­ple en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, har­boured vic­tims at premis­es un­der his con­trol in Pe­tit Val­ley, and di­rect­ed their ex­ploita­tion through pros­ti­tu­tion be­fore ar­rang­ing for some to be trans­ferred to To­ba­go.

It fur­ther al­leged that Du Bois act­ed as a han­dler, sup­plied mar­i­jua­na to vul­ner­a­ble vic­tims, in­clud­ing a mi­nor, and main­tained links with or­gan­ised crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

The PDO stat­ed that au­thor­i­ties con­sid­ered his de­ten­tion nec­es­sary be­cause of con­cerns that he could in­tim­i­date wit­ness­es, in­ter­fere with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, or con­tin­ue traf­fick­ing-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the bail hear­ing, de­fence at­tor­neys Kelvin See­harack, in­struct­ed by Adesh Nar­ine, ar­gued that Du Bois should be grant­ed rea­son­able bail.

The de­fence sub­mit­ted that Du Bois is a sin­gle fa­ther of three, the sole provider for his fam­i­ly, and re­spon­si­ble for his chil­dren’s wel­fare and ed­u­ca­tion.

Coun­sel al­so high­light­ed his lack of pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions, good char­ac­ter, and clean dis­ci­pli­nary record with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, while ar­gu­ing that he posed no flight risk.

Mas­ter Abra­ham grant­ed bail in the sum of $350,000, sub­ject to sev­er­al con­di­tions. Du Bois was or­dered to re­side at his stat­ed ad­dress un­til the mat­ter is de­ter­mined, re­port reg­u­lar­ly to the near­est po­lice sta­tion, and ob­serve a cur­few.

Du Bois has served in the T&T De­fence Force for more than a decade and was most re­cent­ly at­tached to Camp Og­den at the St James Bar­racks.