Derek Achong

The State has been or­dered to pay com­pen­sa­tion to busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael and a San Fer­nan­do man, over them be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged for lead­ing an unau­tho­rised protest out­side of the T&T Guardian’s for­mer head­quar­ters in 2016.

Jus­tice Ricky Rahim made the or­der on Tues­day, as he up­held the duo’s wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case af­ter a brief in-per­son tri­al at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

In the law­suit, Ish­mael, his cam­era­man Wasim Daniel and De­ven­dra Par­tap were claim­ing that po­lice did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect that they were in­volved in lead­ing an il­le­gal demon­stra­tion and act­ed with mal­ice in charg­ing them.

The trio brought the case seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion af­ter the charge was re­duced to par­tic­i­pat­ing in an il­le­gal protest and they were even­tu­al­ly found not guilty.

How­ev­er, Daniel’s case was dis­missed by Rahim, as he did not at­tend or par­tic­i­pate in the tri­al.

Al­though Rahim up­held Ish­mael and Par­tap’s cas­es, he did not as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion owed to them, as they did not file sub­mis­sions on the is­sue be­fore him. The as­sess­ment will be per­formed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

Tes­ti­fy­ing on Tues­day, Ish­mael, the own­er of the Is­lam­ic Broad­cast Net­work (IBN), claimed that on Ju­ly 25, 2016, he was in­vit­ed by an Imam to cov­er a demon­stra­tion out­side of Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed’s Ch­agua­nas of­fice over a col­umn pub­lished by this news­pa­per.

Ish­mael claimed that he and Daniel, who served as a cam­era­man for his tele­vi­sion show Break­ing Bar­ri­ers, were dressed in the net­work’s T-shirts and were con­duct­ing in­ter­views when they were ar­rest­ed by po­lice.

Through­out his tes­ti­mo­ny, Ish­mael de­nied that the demon­stra­tion was a march or protest, as de­scribed by po­lice.

While he de­nied be­ing in­volved in the plan­ning of the event, he con­tend­ed that it did not re­quire the ap­proval of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as it took place on a pri­vate con­crete bridge be­tween the Solomon Ho­choy High­way and the com­pa­ny’s build­ing.

“They were gath­ered. There was no march,” he said.

Ish­mael claimed that he, Daniel, Par­tap and oth­er de­tainees were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion and were forced to spend sev­er­al hours in a dirty hold­ing cell be­fore charges were laid.

He sought to sug­gest po­lice of­fi­cers were di­rect­ed to ar­rest and charge him by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, who he claimed to have pre­vi­ous­ly “ex­posed” on his show.

In his ev­i­dence, Par­tap, of Pleas­antville, claimed that he had just ex­it­ed a Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) bus at a stop off the high­way and was mak­ing his way to Ch­agua­nas to pur­chase some­thing for his then-fi­ancé when he was ar­rest­ed.

Par­tap said the po­lice of­fi­cers did not tell him a rea­son for his ar­rest un­til lat­er that night and ig­nored his claims that he was in no way in­volved in the demon­stra­tion.

“The worse part about it was be­ing put in­to a jail cell de­spite ask­ing why I was here for hours and get­ting no re­sponse,” Par­tap said.

Par­tap claimed that af­ter his ar­rest, he suf­fered de­pres­sion and con­tem­plat­ed sui­cide. He said that the charge al­so af­fect­ed his busi­ness prospects.

In their ev­i­dence, Sgt Lar­ry David and Cpl Gary Greedy, both for­mer­ly as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB), tes­ti­fied over their in­volve­ment in the case.

Both of­fi­cers claimed that they saw the three men hold­ing plac­ards and show­ing them to mo­torists dri­ving in the south­bound lane of the high­way.

How­ev­er, they ad­mit­ted that they could not ex­plain why the plac­ards did not form the ev­i­dence in their crim­i­nal case.

They al­so ad­mit­ted that they made no checks to de­ter­mine if the demon­stra­tion had re­ceived ap­proval and that the trio’s ar­rests were based on in­struc­tions from a se­nior of­fi­cer, who was not on the scene.

“I can­not say who was lead­ing the protest,” Greedy said.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim ruled that he did not be­lieve the of­fi­cers’ ev­i­dence of what tran­spired.

He ruled that their ac­tions to­wards Par­tap were par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious, as he was sim­ply a “pass­er-by” and faced dire men­tal dis­tress as a re­sult.

The trio was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Jag­gasar and Nigel Tran­coso, while Mon­i­ca Smith rep­re­sent­ed the State.