Po­lice have un­til mid­day to­day to charge a po­lice of­fi­cer sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in the kid­nap­ping of Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais.

The 24-hour dead­line was set yes­ter­day af­ter­noon by High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed, af­ter she up­held a habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion chal­leng­ing the of­fi­cer’s pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion with­out be­ing charged. The of­fi­cer’s name has to be with­held un­til he is charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the of­fi­cer’s lawyers, Shi­va Boodoo and Rosh­ni Balka­ran, ex­plained that their client was ar­rest­ed at the La Ro­maine Po­lice Post hours af­ter Pol­lon­ais was re­cused by po­lice.

Boodoo said dur­ing his over 200 hours of de­ten­tion, the of­fi­cer was on­ly ques­tioned once for three hours over Pol­lon­ais’ ab­duc­tion. He was ques­tioned a sec­ond time but over an­oth­er kid­nap­ping. Boodoo sug­gest­ed that po­lice had not been able to gath­er suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against his client dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“They (the po­lice) have tra­versed the length and breadth of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion...It seems that there is no way for­ward for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Boodoo said.

He claimed while in­ves­ti­ga­tors were tak­ing their time, his client was forced to en­dure poor con­di­tions in the hold­ing cell of a po­lice sta­tion.

“He (the of­fi­cer) is just lan­guish­ing in the cells and spend­ing nights on cold con­crete,” he said.

Say­ing the of­fi­cer is not a flight risk as he does not have a valid pass­port, Boodoo said he could have been re­leased and re­ar­rest­ed by po­lice at the end of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al at­tor­neys de­nied the po­lice’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion had stalled. They claimed in­ves­ti­ga­tors would be ready to make a de­ci­sion af­ter they re­ceive voice recog­ni­tion analy­sis on record­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions gath­ered dur­ing the in­quiry.

Af­ter lis­ten­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Mo­hammed agreed to grant the re­quest­ed ex­ten­sion. How­ev­er, she said he should be im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased once he is not charged by noon to­day. As part of her rul­ing, Mo­hammed or­dered the State to pay the of­fi­cer’s $5,000 le­gal costs for bring­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.

The of­fi­cer, who is from Mara­bel­la, was sur­round­ed by heav­i­ly armed po­lice dur­ing the hear­ing and was po­si­tioned me­tres away from where his el­der­ly par­ents sat.

In the event that he is charged, the of­fi­cer would be the third per­son to be im­pli­cat­ed for Pol­lon­ais’ kid­nap­ping.

On Tues­day, 24-year-old Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) Shaun­delle Eu­in, who was al­so last as­signed to the La Ro­main Po­lice Post and 50-year-old La Brea welder Gre­go­ry James ap­peared in court charged with kid­nap­ping for ran­som. Both were de­nied bail when they reap­peared in court yes­ter­day.

Pol­lon­ais, the wife of Ja­son Pol­lon­ais, a di­rec­tor of the South Oropouche-based In­land and Off­shore Con­trac­tors Ltd (IO­CL) was kid­napped on Sep­tem­ber 6 at SS Erin Road, Debe, af­ter she left C3 Cen­tre in Ste Madeleine. On that night, po­lice found her BMW 5308 hy­brid sedan aban­doned in the park­ing lot of an HDC apart­ment build­ing at Cy­press Hills, Union Hall. The kid­nap­pers con­tact­ed her fam­i­ly and de­mand­ed a ran­som for her re­turn.

Pol­lon­ais was res­cued on the night of Sep­tem­ber 10 af­ter po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a white Nis­san AD Wag­on along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way near Courts Mega Store.

The mat­ter will next be heard via video con­fer­ence on Oc­to­ber 16.