Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve have lost their ini­tial bid for their law­suit, al­leg­ing that they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment based on their eth­nic­i­ty and an on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute over the ter­mi­na­tion of leas­es for State land, to be ex­pe­dit­ed.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Vigel Paul dis­missed the cou­ple’s ap­pli­ca­tion, which was large­ly based on Hadeed’s health re­port­ed­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing while the cou­ple re­main de­tained in prison for an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion for a short­en­ing of the time­lines for a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the cou­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge, Jus­tice Paul up­held ob­jec­tions from at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen over claims made by Hadeed’s lo­cal doc­tor, Jacque­line Pereira-Sab­ga.