Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has ap­point­ed a new three-mem­ber Re­view Tri­bunal to as­sess de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to a le­gal no­tice pub­lished to­day (Mon­day Ju­ly 21), David Alexan­der has been named Chair­man of the tri­bunal, with Kent Sam­lal and Shiv­an­gelie Ra­moutar ap­point­ed as mem­bers.

The ap­point­ments were made un­der sec­tion 11 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Chap­ter 1:01, and para­graph 5(2) of the Sched­ule to the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2025, via Le­gal No­tice No. 241 of 2025.

The le­gal no­tice did not set out the op­er­a­tional guide­lines un­der which the tri­bunal will func­tion. Dur­ing the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency in De­cem­ber/Jan­u­ary, de­tainees were en­ti­tled to chal­lenge their de­ten­tion with­in a frame­work pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette.

It re­quired de­tainees to be in­formed of their right to a re­view with­in 24 hours of be­ing tak­en in­to cus­tody. Re­view re­quests could then be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice or the Tri­bunal Sec­re­tari­at, and the tri­bunal was ex­pect­ed to con­vene with­in sev­en days to de­ter­mine whether the de­ten­tion met le­gal stan­dards.

It is not yet clear whether the same pa­ra­me­ters will ap­ply dur­ing this cur­rent emer­gency.