Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion yes­ter­day to re­voke the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, may be the most dra­mat­ic re­ver­sal of a Gov­ern­ment de­ci­sion in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s near­ly 64 years of In­de­pen­dence.

Nev­er be­fore has a gov­ern­ment moved from de­tain­ing a promi­nent cit­i­zen on the ba­sis of grave al­le­ga­tions to or­der­ing that per­son’s re­lease while those al­le­ga­tions re­main un­re­solved.

The an­nounce­ment, made via a news re­lease dur­ing a Cab­i­net meet­ing, came just one day af­ter at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the min­is­ter chal­lenged the find­ings of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) Re­view Tri­bunal. The tri­bunal had con­clud­ed that Hadeed’s con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was “not nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est” and rec­om­mend­ed his re­lease.

The le­gal chal­lenge was puz­zling. Alexan­der ar­gued that the three-mem­ber tri­bunal did not give him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard be­fore reach­ing its de­ci­sion. Yet, the law does not re­quire the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to ac­cept the tri­bunal’s rec­om­men­da­tions. It was there­fore un­clear why the Gov­ern­ment felt com­pelled to con­test a find­ing it was un­der no oblig­a­tion to fol­low.

In ex­plain­ing his de­ci­sion to re­lease the Hadeeds, Alexan­der cit­ed a med­ical re­port de­tail­ing Hadeed’s health con­di­tions and the care re­quired by his spe­cial­ists. How­ev­er, Hadeed’s med­ical chal­lenges were hard­ly new in­for­ma­tion.

Just one week ear­li­er, state at­tor­neys per­suad­ed a Court of Ap­peal pan­el, led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and in­clud­ing Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed and Ricky Rahim, to grant an in­ter­im stay of a sep­a­rate Court of Ap­peal rul­ing that had or­dered the Hadeeds re­leased to home con­fine­ment at their Bayshore res­i­dence. Both ap­pel­late pan­els were ful­ly aware of Hadeed’s med­ical con­di­tion and his need for spe­cial­ist treat­ment.

The min­is­ter him­self would al­so have been aware of those health con­cerns long be­fore yes­ter­day’s an­nounce­ment. It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how a med­ical re­port could sud­den­ly al­ter the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion when the same is­sues had al­ready been be­fore the courts.

Alexan­der stat­ed that, in car­ry­ing out his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, he was re­quired to bal­ance the de­tainees’ right to lib­er­ty against the need to pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty dur­ing the State of Emer­gency. He con­clud­ed that the bal­ance now favoured re­lease.

He al­so not­ed that the Hadeeds could oth­er­wise have re­mained de­tained un­til the end of the SoE af­ter the Privy Coun­cil de­clined to hear their mat­ter on an ex­pe­dit­ed ba­sis.

This abrupt con­cern for Hadeed’s wel­fare sits un­easi­ly be­side state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on June 10 that ap­peared to fore­shad­ow the busi­ness­man’s de­ten­tion.

More im­por­tant­ly, the re­lease rais­es broad­er ques­tions about the Gov­ern­ment’s use of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion pow­ers. If the State has now con­clud­ed that the Hadeeds should be re­leased with­out charges be­ing laid, what does that mean for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of oth­ers held un­der PDOs?

The Gov­ern­ment has con­sis­tent­ly de­clined to pro­vide de­tailed rea­sons for the de­ten­tions. Com­bined with the fail­ure to bring charges against any de­tainee, that lack of trans­paren­cy has now weak­ened pub­lic con­fi­dence in the process.

Whether jus­ti­fied or not, the Hadeed af­fair has ex­posed sig­nif­i­cant vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in the State’s han­dling of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion pow­ers. Those short­com­ings may ul­ti­mate­ly be­come the most en­dur­ing lega­cy of this chap­ter in the coun­try’s lat­est State of Emer­gency.