The High Court chal­lenge over the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga is shin­ing a spot­light on one of the most ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers avail­able to po­lice dur­ing a State of Emer­gency—the abil­i­ty to de­tain peo­ple with­out charge.

While the court will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the le­gal­i­ty of the ap­pli­cants’ con­tin­ued de­ten­tion to­day when the mat­ter goes be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, the case has raised broad­er ques­tions about the le­gal frame­work gov­ern­ing emer­gency de­ten­tion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards that re­main in place and the cir­cum­stances un­der which the State may law­ful­ly re­strict a per­son’s lib­er­ty.

The Hadeeds were ar­rest­ed on June 24 af­ter the ex­e­cu­tion of search war­rants linked to an al­le­ga­tion of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der at their West­moor­ings home and Trinci­ty busi­ness and have re­mained in cus­tody with­out charge. Their le­gal team has chal­lenged the ba­sis of their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion, con­tend­ing that emer­gency pow­ers were on­ly lat­er in­voked to ex­tend cus­tody.