A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad, sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing a broth­el and en­gag­ing in hu­man traf­fick­ing, has lost his le­gal chal­lenge over be­ing de­tained on a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for the past three months.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand dis­missed Lloyd Sealey’s case.

Jus­tice Sieuc­hand re­ject­ed Sealey’s claim that the al­le­ga­tions against him con­tained in the PDO were in­con­sis­tent with the aims of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) and the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) un­der which the PDO was is­sued.