An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali has in­vit­ed Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to vis­it him at the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas to “con­tin­ue their last con­ver­sa­tion” and see what he de­scribed as de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ali, whose Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) was re­voked on Jan­u­ary 30, said his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion at Teteron Bar­racks amounts to a breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

He re­ferred to a meet­ing with Alexan­der pri­or to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and said the time was right to re­sume those dis­cus­sions.

Speak­ing through his at­tor­ney, Ali al­leged that pris­on­ers at the Ch­aguara­mas fa­cil­i­ties con­tin­ue to be de­nied ba­sic rights and priv­i­leges.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that 11 pris­on­ers—nine at Teteron Bar­racks and two at Staubles Bay—re­main housed at the fa­cil­i­ties, which were des­ig­nat­ed pris­ons dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Ali con­firmed that de­tainees have been on a hunger strike since Feb­ru­ary 2, say­ing it was the on­ly peace­ful way to draw at­ten­tion to their sit­u­a­tion.

“The most peace­ful way was to do a hunger strike, be­cause since we’re here, we’ve nev­er seen any­body in au­thor­i­ty,” he said, claim­ing that no se­nior prison of­fi­cial has vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ali al­leged that in­mates have lim­it­ed con­tact with fam­i­ly mem­bers, no ac­cess to air­ing, un­san­i­tary con­di­tions, poor­ly pre­pared meals, and are sub­ject­ed to blind­fold­ing and strip-search­ing. He said some de­tainees suf­fer from chron­ic ill­ness­es, in­clud­ing di­a­betes and epilep­sy, and claimed sev­er­al in­mates have ex­pe­ri­enced seizures.

He al­so al­leged pris­on­ers are blind­fold­ed and shack­led when tak­en to ex­ter­nal med­ical fa­cil­i­ties, with blind­folds re­moved on­ly be­fore pub­lic view­ing.

“We haven’t been charged with any­thing,” Ali said, ques­tion­ing the le­gal ba­sis for their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion and re­stric­tions on ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties such as bed­ding, hot meals, re­li­gious ma­te­ri­als, fam­i­ly con­tact, and med­ical sup­plies.

De­clar­ing the treat­ment “tor­ture,” Ali said he could not iden­ti­fy whether those guard­ing the pris­on­ers were po­lice or prison of­fi­cers, as they are masked at all times.

“You can­not fix law­less­ness with law­less­ness,” he added.

Ali said while he had been told the or­ders were com­ing from Alexan­der, he did not be­lieve al­leged acts of vi­o­lence against de­tainees, in­clud­ing pep­per-spray­ing and beat­ings, were di­rect­ed by the min­is­ter.

Ali is await­ing tri­al in the as­sas­si­na­tion of for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, in 2014.