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Charge or re­lease them and apol­o­gise! This was the call made yes­ter­day by an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), who ques­tioned its ef­fec­tive­ness as it is set to ex­pire on Jan­u­ary 31.

Criston Williams has al­so called on Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to is­sue a pub­lic apol­o­gy to the na­tion and to those de­tained but not charged when the process comes to an end.

De­scrib­ing his eight clients as “bit­ter and an­gry” over their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion, Williams chal­lenged the TTPS to pro­vide ev­i­dence link­ing the de­ten­tion of the 144 in­di­vid­u­als to the de­cline in mur­ders and oth­er crimes. He not­ed that se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions had been made against those de­tained and em­pha­sised that the au­thor­i­ties have had six months to in­ves­ti­gate and press charges.