An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and chair­man of the Re­view Tri­bunal, David Alexan­der, have been giv­en un­til Fri­day to re­spond to chal­lenges by a group of peo­ple de­tained on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDO), who are ques­tion­ing what de­lays have pre­vent­ed them from re­spond­ing to le­gal chal­lenges filed be­tween Au­gust and Oc­to­ber last year.

The six in­clude Ra­jaee Ali, Robert Paul, Roniee Seeth, De­nesh Ma­haraj, Diego Fuentes, and Ee­sha Joseph.

In a let­ter dat­ed yes­ter­day, Jan­u­ary 13, which lists At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie as an in­ter­est­ed par­ty, at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­wan, who is act­ing on be­half of the six, ac­cused both the min­is­ter and chair­man of breach­ing their statu­to­ry du­ties by fail­ing to dis­close or pro­duce re­ports with­in a rea­son­able time.

He ad­vised that they had un­til Jan­u­ary 16 to re­spond, fail­ing which Ju­di­cial Re­view pro­ceed­ings would be ini­ti­at­ed to com­pel dis­clo­sure and seek de­c­la­ra­tions for the un­rea­son­able de­lay.

Ramkhal­wan ques­tioned, “Is it re­al­ly too much to ask the min­is­ter and Re­view Tri­bunal to quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly per­form this ba­sic func­tion—dis­close these re­ports to the de­tainees, who have al­ready been sub­ject­ed to a process that they are legal­ly en­ti­tled to chal­lenge?”

He spec­u­lat­ed, “One must won­der whether this ap­par­ent in­ac­tion is dri­ven by a mis­guid­ed de­sire to pos­ture as an all-pow­er­ful au­thor­i­ty or an at­tempt to os­si­fy and wa­ter down the crit­i­cal role of the Re­view Tri­bunal and le­gal safe­guards de­signed to pro­tect in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ty.”

The State of Emer­gency (SoE), which was rec­om­mend­ed and an­nounced by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Ju­ly 18, 2025, was trig­gered by in­tel­li­gence which claimed that a so­phis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from with­in the prison sys­tem, was plan­ning a se­ries of co­or­di­nat­ed at­tacks tar­get­ing se­nior po­lice and prison of­fi­cials as well as mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry, and even the DPP’s of­fice.

As part of the amend­ed reg­u­la­tions, PDOs were is­sued for peo­ple sus­pect­ed of be­ing part of/or lead­ers of crim­i­nal out­fits that could desta­bilise the coun­try.

Al­though the Re­view Tri­bunal was es­tab­lished to over­see chal­lenges by those de­tained, the Re­view Tri­bunal is first un­der a du­ty to pro­duce a re­port to the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, who, in turn, is man­dat­ed to for­ward a copy of that re­port to the re­spec­tive de­tainee.

Re­ports rel­a­tive to Ra­jaee Ali and Robert Paul were pro­duced and sub­mit­ted to the min­is­ter on De­cem­ber 27, 2025, while the re­main­ing four filed their ap­pli­ca­tions on Au­gust 28, Au­gust 29, Sep­tem­ber 2, and Oc­to­ber 9.

Ramkhal­wan claimed, “There has been no com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the re­main­ing mat­ters. The rec­om­men­da­tions have not been pro­vid­ed.”

He is now seek­ing de­c­la­ra­tions of un­rea­son­able de­lay by both the min­is­ter and the Tri­bunal; or­ders of man­damus com­pelling dis­clo­sure of re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions; and costs and any fur­ther or­ders deemed just by the court.

Pressed yes­ter­day to say what would be­come of the 144 peo­ple for whom PDOs were is­sued af­ter the SoE ex­pires on Feb­ru­ary 1, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials said, “The PDO will come to an end au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, and they will re­vert to their orig­i­nal sta­tus.”

Ad­mit­ting there should be no de­lays re­gard­ing the re­lease of those cur­rent­ly de­tained on PDOs, the of­fi­cial in­sist­ed, “In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing, and some per­sons will be charged.”

Claim­ing the de­ten­tion of these 144 per­sons had led to a “sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in homi­cides,” the of­fi­cial con­tin­ued, “The au­thor­i­ties have the le­gal pow­er to con­tin­ue the de­ten­tion of pris­on­ers who were held on PDOs and moved to Tetron and Staubles Bay.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that there are 41 PDOs that are yet to be ex­e­cut­ed.

Tri­bunal of­fi­cials, mean­while, in­di­cat­ed that they are con­tin­u­ing their work to re­view and make rec­om­men­da­tions to the min­is­ter, as it per­tains to chal­lenges be­fore them.

“There have been no de­lays, and every­thing is go­ing smooth­ly. We have quite a num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions that have come up for hear­ing.”

How­ev­er, with less than three weeks to go be­fore the SoE comes to an end, one of­fi­cial ex­plained, “At some point, we will not be able to pro­vide re­ports as the SoE would have end­ed and the de­tainees would have been re­leased.”