Jensen La Vende and

Derek Achong

Hours af­ter the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali were de­nied an ap­pli­ca­tion to have him trans­ferred to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, they threat­ened to take At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to court.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent yes­ter­day, at­tor­neys Keron Ramkhal­whan, Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj, and An­war Ho­sein ar­gued that Ali’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are be­ing vi­o­lat­ed, as he is be­ing pre­vent­ed from see­ing his lawyers.

The at­tor­neys stat­ed that af­ter dis­cov­er­ing Ali had been moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to the Teteron Army Base in Ch­aguara­mas, they were re­fused per­mis­sion to vis­it their client.

Their pre-ac­tion let­ter states, “Up­on ar­rival at the en­trance of Squab­bles (Staubles) Bay, the ap­pli­cant’s at­tor­ney at law was de­nied ac­cess by mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force. All per­sons wore masks, and no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was pro­vid­ed. The mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force in­di­cat­ed that they could not in­form any­one of the lo­ca­tion of the ap­pli­cant.”

On Fri­day night, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ruled that the at­tor­neys must be grant­ed ac­cess to their client with­in a rea­son­able time and with ap­pro­pri­ate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in place, but they are not en­ti­tled to know his ex­act lo­ca­tion.

The pre-ac­tion let­ter from Ali’s at­tor­ney’s stat­ed, “The right to coun­sel is a right which is ex­press­ly guar­an­teed un­der Chap­ter 1 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. While lawyers are fre­quent­ly at­tacked when they mount con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges to ex­ec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive de­ci­sions, the right to coun­sel is a right which un­der­pins the rule of law, as it fa­cil­i­tates and/or aids the ef­fec­tive­ness of the oth­er rights which are set out in Chap­ter 1 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

The let­ter added that while the po­lice con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, deny­ing ac­cess—even tem­porar­i­ly—could com­pro­mise any state­ments ob­tained or in­ves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out in the ab­sence of le­gal ad­vice. This, they ar­gue, may ex­pose the State to fu­ture claims of im­pro­pri­ety or pro­ce­dur­al un­fair­ness.

Je­re­mie was giv­en a dead­line of 10 am yes­ter­day to re­spond.

He did not re­ply to calls or mes­sages from Guardian Me­dia by late yes­ter­day on the mat­ter.

Ali is among sev­er­al in­mates who were re­moved from the prison as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­clared a State of Emer­gency in re­sponse to cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence that some in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als were plan­ning to or­ches­trate at­tacks.

The in­mates were moved to two lo­ca­tions: Staubles Bay, which is the main base of the T&T Coast Guard, and Teteron Bar­racks, the main base of the T&T Reg­i­ment. Both lo­ca­tions are not ac­ces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic, as the en­trance is manned, more than a mile off, by mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

Gue­var­ro: Jail is jail

In a me­dia re­lease fol­low­ing Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing, Gue­var­ro ques­tioned the mo­tive be­hind a late-night court ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing to re­turn a de­tainee to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca, ask­ing whether there was “some­thing or some­one spe­cial at the oth­er fa­cil­i­ty”.

“Jail is jail. One se­cure fa­cil­i­ty is just as ef­fec­tive as an­oth­er, so I am con­fused as to why they want to pick and choose where they want to be housed whilst they are un­der the care of the State,” Gue­var­ro said in re­sponse to the chal­lenge.

The com­mis­sion­er’s re­marks fol­lowed the dis­missal of the habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion heard Fri­day night by Seep­er­sad, who or­dered the ap­pli­cant to pay le­gal costs.

The de­tainee is cur­rent­ly on re­mand await­ing tri­al for a wide­ly re­port­ed mur­der case along­side sev­er­al oth­ers.

The at­tor­neys chal­lenged le­gal no­tices de­clar­ing the T&T Reg­i­ment’s Teteron Bar­racks and the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas as des­ig­nat­ed prison fa­cil­i­ties. These no­tices were gazetted on Fri­day fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the rights of one man could not out­weigh the rights of the na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly less than 24 hours af­ter the emer­gency mea­sure came in­to ef­fect.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has since reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to law, or­der, and due process. It stat­ed that all op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions dur­ing the State of Emer­gency are based on le­gal frame­works, in­sti­tu­tion­al pro­to­cols, and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­per­a­tives.

The TTPS has urged the pub­lic to re­main calm, co­op­er­ate with law en­force­ment, and re­ly on of­fi­cial chan­nels for up­dates.