Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing one of the pris­on­ers trans­ferred to mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) have raised ques­tions about the le­gal­i­ty of the move.

At­tor­neys Criston J Williams and Aaron Lewis raised the is­sue in a ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al claim filed on be­half of Earl Richards against the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on Mon­day. This is the sec­ond le­gal chal­lenge filed over prison trans­fers.

While Richards’ lawyers pri­mar­i­ly fo­cused on be­ing de­nied ac­cess to their client fol­low­ing his re­lo­ca­tion from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas last week, they al­so ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of the trans­fer. 

They ac­knowl­edged that when the State of Emer­gency procla­ma­tion was is­sued by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo—on the ad­vice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro—a le­gal no­tice des­ig­nat­ed the bar­racks and the T&T Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters as dis­trict pris­ons. How­ev­er, while they ad­mit­ted that any po­lice sta­tion or suit­able place can be giv­en such a des­ig­na­tion, they re­ferred to Sec­tion 5(2) of the Pris­ons Act, which out­lines the cat­e­gories of pris­on­ers who can be housed at such fa­cil­i­ties. 

The leg­is­la­tion states that on­ly in­di­vid­u­als sen­tenced to a prison term of one month or less, fol­low­ing a sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, may be held at a dis­trict prison.

Not­ing that Richards is on re­mand await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal, they said, “Any de­ci­sion to trans­fer the ap­pli­cant/in­tend­ed de­fen­dant to a dis­trict prison is con­trary to the statu­to­ry frame­work.” 

The le­gal is­sue was not ven­ti­lat­ed when the case came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice West­min James yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Richards’ lawyers and Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, along with Pamela El­der, SC, who led the le­gal teams for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er, re­spec­tive­ly, reached an agree­ment re­gard­ing Richards’ ac­cess to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Ini­tial­ly Ram­lo­gan sub­mit­ted that on­ly vir­tu­al ac­cess could be fa­cil­i­tat­ed due to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues re­lat­ed to the SoE.

Stat­ing that Richards was not dis­ad­van­taged, Ram­lo­gan not­ed that his lawyers were still able to file the case even with lim­it­ed ac­cess. 

Williams in­sist­ed on be­ing grant­ed in­ter­im phys­i­cal ac­cess, as re­quest­ed in the law­suit, as he claimed that he could not ad­e­quate­ly as­sess his client’s psy­cho­log­i­cal state and con­di­tion through video con­fer­enc­ing.

The par­ties even­tu­al­ly agreed that vir­tu­al ac­cess would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed with­in 24 hours and phys­i­cal ac­cess would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed with­in 72 hours. 

A date for the next hear­ing of Richards’ case is yet to be set. 

Last Fri­day, pris­on­er Ra­jaee Ali, who is al­so await­ing tri­al for See­ta­hal’s mur­der along­side Richards and sev­er­al oth­ers, filed a habeas cor­pus law­suit chal­leng­ing his trans­fer and lack of ac­cess to his le­gal team. 

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad held a late-night hear­ing and re­ject­ed Ali’s claims over al­leged breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

He stat­ed that the rights of one man could not trump the rights of the na­tion as a whole, es­pe­cial­ly less than 24 hours af­ter the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure took ef­fect.

In a me­dia re­lease fol­low­ing Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion, Gue­var­ro ques­tioned the mo­tive be­hind the le­gal chal­lenge. 

“Jail is jail. One se­cure fa­cil­i­ty is just as ef­fec­tive as an­oth­er, so I am con­fused as to why they want to pick and choose where they want to be housed whilst they are un­der the care of the State,” Gue­var­ro added.

Gue­var­ro has re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that the SoE was re­quest­ed to ad­dress a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing in­side and out­side the coun­try’s pris­ons. He claimed that some in­mates were trans­ferred to pre­vent them from ac­cess­ing il­le­gal com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices at the MSP. 

Af­ter the dis­missal of Ali’s case, his lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, then threat­ened a sep­a­rate con­sti­tu­tion­al claim over ac­cess to his client and an­oth­er de­tainee who was al­so trans­ferred. 

On Mon­day, El­der and at­tor­ney Richard Ma­son wrote to Ramkhal­whan in­form­ing him that ac­cess to his clients would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed vir­tu­al­ly. 

El­der and Ma­son al­so re­ferred to Sec­tion 7 of the Pris­ons Act, which gives the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er the dis­cre­tion to trans­fer pris­on­ers from one fa­cil­i­ty to an­oth­er.