For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Gary Grif­fith say con­cerns over the ve­rac­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion that formed the ba­sis for the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve for the past 22 days per­sist, even as the cou­ple re­mained in cus­tody af­ter the State got a late-night stay on an ear­li­er rul­ing or­der­ing their re­lease from in­car­cer­a­tion to house ar­rest by the Ap­peal Court.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia hours be­fore the late-night stay was grant­ed, Gon­za­les, who is al­so Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man and was a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) mem­ber un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, said the re­lease of the Hadeeds re­in­forced con­cerns raised by the Op­po­si­tion over the Gov­ern­ment’s use of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) to de­tain peo­ple. He again ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of weapon­is­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) to by­pass due process.

“We have heard noth­ing from the po­lice as to what is the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on these very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against the Hadeeds. The mere fact that they have been placed on a PDO for the past cou­ple of weeks sug­gests that the State does not have any ev­i­dence to prof­fer charges against the Hadeeds and that to me is very se­ri­ous, be­cause it says to me that the State is pre­pared to use emer­gency pow­ers vis-a-vis the is­suance of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, to in­car­cer­ate peo­ple who do not have and whom they (the au­thor­i­ties) do not have ev­i­dence to sup­port any crim­i­nal charges against them.”