Se­nior Coun­sel Faris Al Rawi has filed a writ of habeas cor­pus in the High Court against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, al­leg­ing thabusi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, have bee un­law­ful­ly de­tained and sub­ject­ed to de­grad­ing con­di­tions while in po­lice cus­tody.

In an af­fi­davit filed in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion, Al Rawi de­scribed the con­di­tions in which Genevieve Hadeed was held at the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion af­ter she was trans­ferred there on the night of June 24. He said the cell mea­sured about eight feet by six feet, had a dirty ter­raz­zo floor, no bed­ding or fur­ni­ture, a hole in the floor used as a toi­let, no run­ning wa­ter, and reeked of fae­ces and urine. He said there was no ven­ti­la­tion, the light­ing was poor, and cock­roach­es were crawl­ing across the floor. An­oth­er fe­male de­tainee was curled up on the floor in a fe­tal po­si­tion.

Al Rawi al­so claimed Do­minic Hadeed, who suf­fers from sleep ap­noea and wears an or­thopaedic leg brace, was de­tained at the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was forced to sleep on a bare con­crete slab with­out ac­cess to his CPAP ma­chine be­cause there was no elec­tri­cal con­nec­tion avail­able in the cell. He said Hadeed was un­able to sleep be­cause of his med­ical con­di­tion.