Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian..co.tt

Al­though the State of Emer­gency (SoE) end­ed last week­end, the wives of in­mates Ra­jaee Ali and Earl Richards say their loved ones con­tin­ue to be de­nied ba­sic rights at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

Ac­cord­ing to Sta­cy Grif­fith and Tri­cia James, their hus­bands are be­ing ex­posed to de­hu­man­is­ing con­di­tions, even be­ing de­nied ac­cess to Qurans, as the Holy Is­lam­ic month of Ra­madan ap­proach­es.

“We are just ask­ing for things that he is en­ti­tled to... In court, they would say that we could bring clothes et cetera, but when we get to the prison, it’s a whole dif­fer­ent ball game. They tell you you could come and buy things, when you go there, you can’t buy things. You have to put the mon­ey in the can­teen. They don’t know they have mon­ey in the can­teen, be­cause they have no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with us or their at­tor­neys. They could on­ly pur­chase six things,” Sta­cy Grif­fith, Ali’s wife, said.

The women claim they have not had any con­tact with their hus­bands for six months and they are ur­gent­ly seek­ing jus­tice for the mur­der ac­cused. They said their fam­i­lies are be­ing torn apart by the ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Ali’s wife said their 13-year-old daugh­ter was be­ing af­fect­ed.

“She is very qui­et and she keeps every­thing in­side. I try my best to make it as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble to dis­tract her, but she’s 13 years old. There is on­ly so much you could do,” Grif­fith said.

She added, “I find it un­fair. You all es­tab­lish it’s a prison. It doesn’t meet the re­quire­ments of a prison, and we have to wait on the court. The court is an­oth­er sto­ry. It feels like they are the peo­ple you are sup­posed to turn to for jus­tice, and it is lack­ing. They are not will­ing to do their jobs. I hon­est­ly feel like the court is a waste of time.”

She called on the prison au­thor­i­ties to al­low her hus­band to ac­cess ba­sic prison rights now that the SoE has come to an end.

Mean­while, Richards’ wife, Tri­cia James, broke down in tears when shar­ing her fam­i­ly’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I find it was re­al­ly up­set­ting. It had me in a state of de­pres­sion, know­ing that you can­not speak to your loved ones, know­ing you can­not speak with your loved ones… It was re­al­ly a try­ing time, and now that the SoE is fin­ished and you’re think­ing you are get­ting to see your loved ones and the State is still try­ing to say that their rights are still not be­ing giv­en back to them,” James said.

“They are still down there, and I don’t see it as a prison... It’s six months now. I don’t even know what go­ing on with my hus­band. The last thing I heard was that he was in the hos­pi­tal, and I still don’t even know what he was in the hos­pi­tal for. These are things that no fam­i­ly mem­ber wants to go through.”

Ac­cord­ing to the men’s at­tor­ney, Criston J Williams, the fam­i­lies will de­cide if they are tak­ing fur­ther le­gal ac­tion de­pend­ing on the out­come of a cur­rent court de­ci­sion on the sta­tus of the Ch­aguara­mas de­ten­tion cen­tres. The court is ex­pect­ed to rule on whether the fa­cil­i­ty can be legal­ly clas­si­fied as a civ­il prison or a mil­i­tary prison.

Ac­cord­ing to Williams, Ali and Richards were nev­er ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the State’s al­le­ga­tions of a plot tar­get­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ju­di­cial mem­bers.

“They moved them up there, be­cause the ini­tial cause for the SoE—re­mem­ber when they were talk­ing about the rock­et launch­er and a crim­i­nal net­work—then they moved Ra­jaee Ali up there. Up to now, they have nev­er been in­ter­viewed or ques­tioned about those al­le­ga­tions—up to now,” Williams said.

“They have no re­li­gious books, for ex­am­ple. And even for the lawyers to see them, it is a to­tal block­age. Per­mis­sion to see them keeps get­ting put off, put off… If you have no re­li­gious books and it’s al­most six months you are in there in sep­a­rate cells, that is al­most tor­tur­ous to some­one.”

Ali and Richards were re­lo­cat­ed from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to Staubles Bay and Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas six months ago.

Their re­lo­ca­tion came af­ter the Ju­ly de­c­la­ra­tion of a SoE by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, af­ter po­lice in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed that pris­on­ers were al­leged­ly plan­ning to at­tack high-pro­file na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ju­di­cia­ry mem­bers.

Ali’s trans­fer was sub­ject to a le­gal chal­lenge by his wife but Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ruled against it, stat­ing that in a SoE, the na­tion’s rights trumped in­di­vid­ual rights.

Richards’ le­gal at­tempts to pre­vent the move were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

A month lat­er, in Au­gust, Ali and Richards were served with a de­ten­tion or­der un­der the SoE. They were ac­cused of be­ing the lead­ers of the Rad­i­cal Is­lam­ic crim­i­nal gang. The or­der al­tered their le­gal sta­tus, re­mov­ing them from the usu­al pro­tec­tions of the prison rules.

Ali ac­cused the au­thor­i­ties sev­er­al times of sub­ject­ing him to harsh con­di­tions, and even al­leged there were at­tempts to kill him and Richards.

Since Ju­ly 18, how­ev­er, Ali al­leged he has been con­fined with­out air­ing time, de­nied fam­i­ly con­tact, sub­ject­ed to re­peat­ed strip search­es, and giv­en ques­tion­able meals by masked of­fi­cers who refuse to iden­ti­fy them­selves. He claims his re­li­gious di­etary re­quire­ments are be­ing ig­nored and he has been de­prived of cloth­ing, toi­letries, books, and le­gal con­sul­ta­tion.

Ali and Richards were among ten peo­ple charged with the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC. The at­tor­ney was shot dead on March 4, 2015, along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street in Wood­brook.

At­tempts to get com­ments from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro were un­suc­cess­ful.