An al­leged gang leader has lost his le­gal chal­lenge over be­ing re­lo­cat­ed from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca, as law en­force­ment of­fi­cers be­gan ad­dress­ing the se­cu­ri­ty threat that trig­gered the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency (SoE) on Fri­day morn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that around 11.30 last night, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed a habeas cor­pus writ filed by lawyers for the man, who, along with al­most half a dozen al­leged gang mem­bers, is on re­mand await­ing tri­al for a high-pro­file mur­der.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the man’s at­tor­neys, Keron Ramkha­lawan and Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj, chal­lenged le­gal no­tices de­clar­ing the T&T Reg­i­ment’s Teteron Bar­racks and the T&T Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas as des­ig­nat­ed prison fa­cil­i­ties.

The no­tices were gazetted yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s de­c­la­ra­tion pro­claim­ing the SoE.

The at­tor­neys al­so com­plained that their client had been de­nied ac­cess to his le­gal team since his re­lo­ca­tion.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ments and up­held the sub­mis­sions of the State’s le­gal team, led by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh.

He ruled that the rights of one man could not out­weigh the rights of the na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly less than 24 hours af­ter the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure came in­to ef­fect.