Jan­nelle Bernard

Re­porter

A for­mer de­tainee held un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) says the al­le­ga­tions used to de­tain him were “lies” and that he still does not know why he was con­sid­ered a threat.

The man, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, spoke ex­ten­sive­ly on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day.

He said he was ar­rest­ed while dri­ving in April and was giv­en no ex­pla­na­tion for his de­ten­tion. He added that with­in 45 min­utes of be­ing stopped, he was tak­en to a po­lice sta­tion, hand­ed a PDO and lat­er trans­ferred to the East­ern Re­gion­al Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty, where he spent al­most six months with­out be­ing charged.

The al­le­ga­tions list­ed on the PDO in­clud­ed killings, ma­li­cious wound­ing, kid­nap­ping and pos­ses­sion of high-pow­ered firearms.

“No charges. The al­le­ga­tions, yeah, the al­le­ga­tions on the pa­per was killings, ma­li­cious wound­ing, a cache of high-pow­ered firearms. So, when you ask, well, ex­plain this, what this is, be­cause you’re lost. If you know for a fact that you’re not in­volved in these things, you’re go­ing to be lost when they hand you this piece of pa­per called a PDO. So, it’s re­al­ly crazy,” he said.

The for­mer de­tainee said the con­di­tions at the cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty were in­hu­mane.

“We in a steel build­ing in a con­tain­er with a hole to the top, fan not work­ing, toi­let not work­ing,” he said. “Noth­ing work­ing be­sides the gate to lock.”

He said he lost 50lbs be­cause he bare­ly ate. He said of­fi­cials may doc­u­ment what they in­tend to serve, but the re­al­i­ty was dif­fer­ent.

“When the food come to the fa­cil­i­ty, it is the worse. The fish like leatherback. The chick­en bloody. It’s the worst, the worst.” 

He de­scribed days with­out “air­ing,” which is usu­al­ly one hour a day when the de­tainees were al­lowed to be out­side.

Some­times, he said, if the weath­er was bad, the one hour a day “air­ing” was can­celled. If a hol­i­day fell on a Fri­day, the air­ings were can­celled from Thurs­day to Mon­day. 

“We mak­ing more hard jail than peo­ple who con­vict­ed.”

He said de­tainees were giv­en one minute and 30 sec­onds to clean them­selves, with 15 men in the show­er at the same time.

He al­so ac­cused prison of­fi­cers of abus­ing their au­thor­i­ty and phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ing de­tainees.

The for­mer de­tainee al­so al­leged that rec­om­men­da­tions made by the State of Emer­gency tri­bunals were dis­re­gard­ed by au­thor­i­ties.

“It have peo­ple that win their tri­bunal, and the tri­bunal ad­vise to let go this per­son be­cause they don’t have suf­fi­cient grounds to hold this per­son, and the min­is­ter keep send­ing back a let­ter say­ing, no. Be­cause he stat­ing he didn’t the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present what he need to present to the court and all these things,” he ex­plained.

“Re­al­ly and tru­ly, all, every­thing is lies. They hold you based on lies, you know. I can’t even say al­le­ga­tions. I have to say straight-up lies,” he said.

The for­mer de­tainee said the ex­pe­ri­ence had left him psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed, but he in­tends to take le­gal ac­tion against the State.