(Trinidad Express) Coast Guard officers were the ones responsible for the rape and battery of a 21-year-old Venezuelan woman at the Heliport in Chaguaramas last month.
She was raped so badly that she began “violently haemorrhaging” to the point where she had to be hospitalised for two days.
Initially, it was reported that the woman had escaped from the facility, but court documents filed by her attorneys on Friday indicated that she was taken from the Heliport by officers there and dropped off on the side of the Western Main Road in Chaguaramas.
The woman claimed that while detained at the facility, she was assaulted and beaten by three Coast Guard officers.
Two of the officers held her down while the other raped her.
“Throughout the said ordeal our client was beaten by the said officers. Her assault was so violent that she began to haemorrhage violently,” stated the attorneys.
The lawyers were successful yesterday in having the High Court grant a writ of habeas corpus in favour of their client.
The application was made given that the attorneys were fearful that the woman would be repatriated to Venezuela after she was eventually detained again by Central Division police at a bar in Freeport on May 26 and taken to the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in Aripo, East Trinidad.
The Sunday Express understands that on Friday, the woman was removed from IDC and taken into the care of the Ministry of National Security’s Counter Trafficking Unit (CTU) who told her attorneys that she was not requesting legal representation.
But the lawyers nonetheless filed their habeas corpus application at the High Court.
In addition to the substantive application, attorneys Criston J Williams, Bernadette Arneaud and Shivanand Mohan of law firm Quantum Legal filed an application for an emergency hearing.
Yesterday afternoon Justice Jacqueline Wilson granted the applications, directing that the matter be fit for urgent hearing; that the Office of the Attorney General take the woman before a licensed medical doctor for examination before today’s date; that the State file and serve the medical report before Tuesday and that she be granted access to attorneys of her choice.
In addition, the judge also ordered that the State provide the woman with access to a licensed interpreter for the purpose of filing her affidavit in the proceedings, and that she is to have her affidavit in response to the one by the State filed on or before June 9.
Once this is done, the court will then set a date for the next hearing.
In an interview with Sunday Express yesterday following the order, one of the attorneys criticised the Ministry of National Security for its “scant courtesy” and failing to attend yesterday’s court matter.
“What it shows is that they are not willing to work with us. They know there was a matter this morning. We served the Minister of National Security’s legal department. It shows scant courtesy to the Court because they knew they had Court proceedings…,” Arneaud said.
How could she have ‘escaped’ or ‘left’?
It was at the Joint Select Committee (JSC) hearing on Human Rights on May 26 that executive director of the Caribbean Centre for Human Rights Denise Pitcher disclosed that the Venezuelan woman had gone missing after she reported being sexually abused at the Immigration station at the Heliport.
Pitcher also called for a probe into the facility.
The Heliport was set up in 2020 as an assessment centre for individuals found illegally entering T&T’s borders, and as Covid-19 quarantine centre for those illegal immigrants.
At the JSC, CTU director Dr Samantha Chaitram confirmed the “escape” and “absconding” of the 21-year-old woman.
DCP (Intelligence and Investigations) Curt Simon told the JSC that police enquiries into the report of abuse was pending, as the woman had not been located.
When the Express reached out to Simon for an update two days later (May 29), he confirmed that Central Division Police had “picked up” the Venezuelan woman in Freeport on the morning of May 26.
He said his information was that the woman left the Heliport of her own volition and did not disappear from the facility as was being said.
“You use the word disappear, but I would be careful with that word. It connotes some sort of other interference,” Simon said.
“The person left the premises on their own volition. It is not a tightly secured venue…the person left,” Simon stated.
But activist and founder of the non-governmental organisation Themis Foundation Yesenia Gonzalez, disputed this account in her affidavit submitted in court to support the woman’s application.
So too did the woman’s attorneys.
“From our numerous cases we’ve had against the Ministry of National Security, Immigration Department, our case papers would say that this is a top-notch security place whereby no one from the outside is given access to the military base. So if anyone tells me that this place is unsecured that is an improper construct,” Williams said in an interview on Thursday.
“It is impossible for a girl 21 years of age, less than (five feet, three inches) to have escaped that particular location or have walked out because of the tight security,” Arneaud said.
Williams, Arneaud and Gonzalez all called for an investigation into the operations of the Chaguaramas Heliport.
“With respect to reports of abuses at the Heliport centre, we’ve had cases of modern slavery, meaning that the men would have to clean boats, clean the place. We had instances where children have gotten (sexually transmitted diseases), and migrant lesbian women taking advantage of young girls at the Heliport,” Williams alleged.
He described the facility as a “Guantanamo Bay for migrants”.
Guantanamo Bay is an infamous US military prison located in Cuba which was opened in 2002 in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
It became the focus of worldwide controversy over alleged violations of the legal rights of detainees and accusations of torture and brutal treatment of detainees by US authorities.
Williams voiced concern about the Heliport being manned by the Coast Guard and not the Immigration Division.
“My concern is about the legal construct of that. It is a bit weird. It’s a bit unnatural that you have immigrants being guarded by military personal in any construct globally. Coast Guard doesn’t have the training or the temperament, or the resources or the proper remit. When you have men and women sharing the same facility and you have Coast Guard men guarding the clients, it just makes room for abuse, especially if there is no independent legal oversight by an independent non-governmental body,” he argued.
“There must be an enquiry into the operations of the Heliport facility in Chaguaramas, if not, what does that say. There must be a commission of enquiry into the Heliport facility because if not, what message does that send to international persons? That all these things are happening but no one seems to care,” he stressed.
Gonzalez said: “My immediate concern is for the girl’s safety and her getting justice, and that the authorities should do a proper investigation about this matter… They should not make promises and let the story die because what will happen to the rest of women at the Heliport,” she said in an interview on Friday.
Arneaud said no outsiders, including attorneys of detainees, can access the facility and this raises a red flag.
“We can go to any prison. We can go to any IDC, but no attorney, no outsiders, are allowed to go into that facility, so there is no oversight per se…” she said.
The Sunday Express repeatedly tried reaching National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds last week on whether a probe would be launched into the Heliport’s operations, but he did not respond to calls or messages.
Calls to CTU director Dr Samantha Chaitram also went unanswered Friday and yesterday.
There was no response from Attorney General Reginald Armour to questions on the issue.
The Sunday Express also reached out to DCP Simon yesterday and Friday via telephone.
He did not respond.
Chief of Defence Staff, Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, Air Vice Marshall Darryl Daniel also did not respond to calls from the Sunday Express on Friday.
