SoE detainees hooded for lawyer visits–attorney

Jensen La Vende

Senior Reporter

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After a High Court judge ruled that it was reasonable for attorneys visiting men held at Teteron Barracks to have their eyes covered, the attorneys revealed that their clients have bags placed over their heads before legal meetings.

Speaking with Guardian Media yesterday, attorney Criston Williams, who represents Earl Richards, one of 10 men detained at the regiment base in Chaguaramas, said that his client and others are hooded by the authorities.

“When they’re being transported and when they have to go anywhere, a green knapsack is placed over their heads. If it is, for example, that they have to come to the attorney visits, the green knapsack is over their heads. That, to me, is a human rights issue.”

On July 29, High Court Judge Westmin James dismissed an application filed by Williams to halt the practice of blindfolding attorneys before visiting their clients, ruling that the security measure was reasonable given the risks involved.

Richards and nine others were removed from Building 13 of the Maximum Security Prison and placed at Teteron Barracks after the State declared a State of Emergency on July 18. The rationale was that prisoners and others were part of a crime syndicate plotting to murder top judicial officers, police officers, and other public officials.

Before the court intervened, Williams told Guardian Media that he was informed he had to be blindfolded before meeting his client. He filed a judicial review, arguing that being blindfolded or having a bag placed over his head during visits was “unconstitutional, unlawful, and a form of intimidation”.

In defending the State’s decision, Senior Counsel Anand Ramlogan submitted that security measures should be maintained.

“Prisons are always willing to facilitate meetings, but unreasonable demands that could endanger national security cannot be accommodated,” he stated.

Calls and messages to both Defence Minister Wayne Sturge and acting Prison Commissioner Carlos Corraspe on the legality of hooding inmates went unanswered.

Williams’ client and another inmate, Rajaee Ali, on Thursday denied that they were plotting to murder judicial officers, including the DPP. They claimed in handwritten notes that an accusation was made to create a scenario where they could be attacked and killed.

Williams said that since the men were transferred, the two men were not questioned in relation to any murder plot.

On Friday, Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro said a suspect in the plot to murder an attorney representing one of the 10 men was held with a sophisticated weapon. He added that the suspect is the right-hand man of one of the ten men, and the intended target is currently representing one of the ten men.