Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

A San Juan man will have to wait sev­er­al months to learn the fate of his law­suit over be­ing de­tained by the po­lice for a week as part of a probe in­to an al­leged plot to dis­rupt Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in 2018.

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed promised to de­liv­er his judg­ment in Tariq Mo­hammed’s case by Oc­to­ber 29 af­ter pre­sid­ing over a vir­tu­al tri­al be­tween Tues­day and yes­ter­day and set­ting dead­lines for fil­ing sub­mis­sions.

In the law­suit, Mo­hammed claimed he was wrong­ful­ly ar­rest­ed, false­ly im­pris­oned, as­sault­ed and bat­tered by po­lice of­fi­cers af­ter they ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his fam­i­ly’s prop­er­ty at Mo­hammedville, El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018.

The of­fi­cers searched an apart­ment shared by Mo­hammed’s younger broth­er Wasim and his wife be­fore search­ing the area of the prop­er­ty shared by Mo­hammed, his wife and his par­ents.

The of­fi­cers left af­ter they did not find any il­le­gal items in­clud­ing ex­plo­sives but re­turned hours lat­er to ar­rest Mo­hammed.

He was de­tained at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion for sev­en days be­fore he was re­leased with­out be­ing charged on Ash Wednes­day.

Mo­hammed’s broth­er filed a sep­a­rate case against the state which was re­cent­ly up­held by High Court Judge West­min James and he was award­ed al­most $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

Tes­ti­fy­ing yes­ter­day was act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice De­nis Knutt, who led the con­tin­gent of of­fi­cers that raid­ed the Mo­hammeds’ home.

Knutt de­nied al­le­ga­tions that he did not show fam­i­ly mem­bers the war­rant be­fore com­menc­ing the search. He said he re­ceived in­struc­tions from a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer who was lead­ing the probe to re­turn to the prop­er­ty to take Mo­hammed in for ques­tion­ing.

Dur­ing his cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by Mo­hammed’s lawyer Kings­ley Wales­by, Knutt was shown a let­ter sent by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs in 2016 when Mo­hammed was de­tained in Sau­di Ara­bia while liv­ing there.

In the let­ter, the min­istry said Mo­hammed had a clean crim­i­nal record and was not sus­pect­ed of en­gag­ing in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties.

Wales­by sug­gest­ed that it showed that Mo­hammed did not have the propen­si­ty to en­gage in the con­duct he was sus­pect­ed of.

Not­ing that Mo­hammed was ar­rest­ed a lit­tle over a year af­ter he was re­leased by Sau­di Ara­bi­an au­thor­i­ties and re­turned to T&T, Wales­by said: “This is not long to shift al­le­giances and start com­mit­ting crim­i­nal of­fences.”

Knutt main­tained that he did not have sight of the doc­u­ment while con­duct­ing the probe. He al­so claimed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had a du­ty to in­ves­ti­gate in­for­ma­tion of the pur­port­ed plot, pro­vid­ed by for­eign law en­force­ment agen­cies, de­spite the pre­vi­ous of­fi­cial state­ment about Mo­hammed.

“You have to look to elim­i­nate all el­e­ments of doubt,” he said.

Wales­by al­so asked why a video record­ing of the in­ter­view con­duct­ed by the po­lice with Mo­hammed was not dis­closed in the case de­spite nu­mer­ous re­quests.

Knutt claimed he hand­ed over the record­ing to state at­tor­neys but could not ex­plain why on­ly a tran­script was pro­vid­ed.

He al­so claimed that Mo­hammed was not ar­rest­ed but vol­un­teered to go to the po­lice sta­tion to be sub­ject­ed to the probe.

Mo­hammed was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Alvin Ram­roop and Safraz Al­saran. Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau led the le­gal team for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.