Mixed reaction to AG’s statement on Teteron prisoners’ rights

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Senior Reporter

The Attorney General’s remark that the rights of detainees at the Defence Force base in Chaguaramas are not a priority during the State of Emergency is receiving a mixed response.

While the Criminal Bar Association head is heaping praise on John Jeremie for sending a stern message that the Government is in control, former AG Faris Al-Rawi believes his actions were nothing special.

During Tuesday’s debate on the Prisons (No 2) Order, 2025, which gives the Minister of Homeland Security the authority to designate specific locations as prisons or convict depots, Jeremie revealed that he visited some of the detainees at Teteron Barracks and told them that during the SoE, their rights are secondary to those of the wider public.

But Al-Rawi, who sat across from the AG on Tuesday in the Upper House, said he was not impressed.

“It’s not uncommon for Attorneys General to visit prisons. The visit by Attorney General Jeremie, as he disclosed in the Senate, is perhaps expected. I myself as a former attorney general visited prisons and detention centres and, in fact, I am also aware of prisons raids et cetera conducted during my time. So, Attorney General Jeremie’s visit to the prisons and to detention centres, especially those at Teteron and Staubles Bay, is par for the course,” the former AG contended.

Al-Rawi added that Jeremie’s statement to the detainees was also unremarkable.

“Relative to the statement of the balancing of rights and that the rights of citizens trump the rights of those who are incarcerated, again, all rights are subject to the law and the Constitution, of course, allows for a state of emergency and for detention and in our case, the Prisons Act allows for prisoners to be moved from place to place,” he added.

Al-Rawi said while Jeremie’s comments were the focus of Tuesday’s debate, it overshadowed a key problem in the bill being debated.

During Al-Rawi’s contribution, he raised the fact that there was no clear demarcation of the parameters of the prison area at Teteron and Staubles Bay, which, he said, is a big problem.

“There was a need for specificity to define the prisons, because wherever I have had an area that is not exclusively a prison area, we have done a specific description of prisons and that’s so that we can have the prison’s rules, the Prison’s Act and the Interception of Communication Act apply,” he said.

He added, “A cell phone outside a prison on Frederick Street is not the same as a cell phone inside the prison on Frederick Street. You see intelligence must be converted to evidence and therefore knowing the confines of the prison is important, so the Attorney General’s visit to these places, masked or unmasked, is not a remarkable thing.”

Al-Rawi said this opens the door for legal challenges.

However, CBA president Israel Khan, SC, believes Jeremie’s statement and his trip to the Teteron Barracks will help instil public confidence.

“The Government is in control and the public will have confidence in the Government that the Attorney General could go down and say, ‘I’m not hiding’. And what he is doing in Parliament, he is telling the country that he is concerned about prisoners’ rights also, the constitutional rights, but we’re in a State of Emergency and we have information,” Khan told Guardian Media.

Khan also commended Jeremie for “walking the extra mile” to visit the detainees in their cells.

“He allowed them to see his face. He’s not afraid, it seems, about anything. I must congratulate him for taking that bold step,” Khan declared.

Khan said while there may be blowback as it pertains to legal challenges brought by the attorneys for the detained, it does not mean those lawyers will succeed at the courts.

“I remember the lawyer took a matter to court that he had to wear a mask and so the High Court decided that there’s nothing wrong with that during a State of Emergency,” Khan said in relation to the challenge made by Rajaee Ali’s lawyer CJ Williams, who was blindfolded while being take to see his client at the army facility last week.

Khan noted, however, that despite there being a new Government, the country is still in a crime “predicament.” But he said the UNC is at least making an effort to get a handle on it.

“So, it’s only two or three months the new Government is there, but they’re moving quickly. They’re not sitting behind.”