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Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance

& Other Ill Treatment

In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to 2025                                gvnet.com/torture/Trinidad&Tobago.htm

Trinidad & Tobago

The police have been criticized for excessive use of force and many abuses by the authorities go unpunished..

Lengthy pretrial detention is a problem, and approximately 60 percent of the prison population is made up of pretrial detainees or remand prisoners. Many prisons are overcrowded and have poor sanitation.

  [Freedom House Country Report, 2018]

Description: Description: Trinidad&Tobago

CAUTION:  The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Trinidad & Tobago.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.  No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE

Students

If you are looking for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of particular interest to you.  You might be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the courtroom.  Perhaps your paper might focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing water.  On the other hand, you might choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who perpetrate such cruelty.  There is a lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.  Scan other countries as well as this one.  Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions.  Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources that are available on-line.

*** ARCHIVES ***

2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Trinidad and Tobago

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 30 March 2021

www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/trinidad-and-tobago/

[accessed 10 August 2021]

TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT

Although the law prohibits such practices, there were reports that police officers and prison guards sometimes used excessive force.

Despite government steps to punish security force members and other officials charged with killings or other abuses, open-ended investigations and the generally slow pace of criminal judicial proceedings created a climate of impunity.

PRISON AND DETENTION CENTER CONDITIONS

Physical Conditions: Gross overcrowding was a problem. All prisons had inadequate lighting, poor ventilation, and inadequate sanitation. Conditions at the sole women’s prison were better than those in other prisons.

ARREST PROCEDURES AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES

Pretrial Detention: Lengthy pretrial detention was a problem. Pretrial detainees constituted more than two-thirds of the prison population. Most detainees’ trials began seven to 10 years after their arrest, although some spent even longer in pretrial detention. The length of pretrial detention frequently equaled or exceeded the maximum sentence for the alleged crime.

Freedom House Country Report

2018 Edition

freedomhouse.org/country/trinidad-and-tobago/freedom-world/2018

[accessed 15 May 2020]

IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? - The police have been criticized for excessive use of force and many abuses by the authorities go unpunished.

Lengthy pretrial detention is a problem, and approximately 60 percent of the prison population is made up of pretrial detainees or remand prisoners. Many prisons are overcrowded and have poor sanitation.

Where Are the Missing People?

Peter Richards, Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, Port Of Spain, 6 Jan 2009

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45311

[accessed 1 January 2011]

www.ipsnews.net/2009/01/trinidad-where-are-the-missing-people/

[accessed 31 August 2016]

When 15-year-old Devika Lalman left her home a few days before Christmas to buy school supplies for the new academic term, her parents had taken all the necessary precautions to ensure her safety.   The mother of the Form Three student said she had also given her daughter a cell phone, but all calls to that phone have gone unanswered and the daughter has not been seen since.

"Almost all the women who disappeared left behind a pattern. Their cell phones were switched off. We also heard that they were transported from one house to another before being shipped out."   The Sunday Guardian newspaper, which carried out its own investigation, said that the "clandestine local trade, which operates through a well-organised network and is supported by several powerful agencies, is linked to an international human trafficking ring".   The paper said that children were being sold for as much as 34,000 dollars and adults for half that amount.   "They are mostly used as sex slaves and sometimes for slave labour. Sometimes, they are used to make pay-offs in the drug trade," the paper said, noting that the trafficking also includes young women who were being brought into the country from Venezuela, Colombia and Guyana.

"We recognise that legislation is critically important at this point because without proper legislation, which is really one of the handicaps in the social areas, we could not possibly move forward in terms of consequences for human traffickers," said the party's deputy leader, Dr Sharon Gopaul McNicol, a clinical psychologist.   She told a news conference that most of the human trafficking "takes place in small boats where people are drugged and shipped off to other countries, primarily those countries that people don't speak English so there is little chance of the victims being able to get away without much difficulty."

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

From an old article -- URL not available

Article was published sometime prior to 2015

POLICE AND SECURITY FORCES - There were continued reports of unlawful killings by police. Official claims that police had fired in self-defence were frequently challenged by eyewitnesses.

Atiba Duncan was fatally shot by police in April in the community of Mt D’or Road. Police officers claimed he had pointed a gun at them as they tried to arrest him. However, a forensic pathologist found that he had been shot in the back. Investigations were continuing at the end of the year.

Search … AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

For more articles:: Search Amnesty International’s website

www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=trinidad+tobago+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance

[accessed 15 January 2019]

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*** EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE ***

Human Rights Reports » 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 25, 2009

www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119175.htm

[accessed 14 February 2013]

2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119175.htm

[accessed 7 July 2019]

TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Although the constitution and the law prohibit such practices, there were credible reports that police officers and prison guards mistreated individuals under arrest or in detention.

Human Rights Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006

www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61700.htm

[accessed 14 February 2013]

2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61700.htm

[accessed 7 July 2019]

TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law prohibits such practices; however, security forces reportedly tortured detainees to elicit confessions and discourage resistance. The forms of torture and other abuse included: electric shock; submersion of the head in water; beatings with hands, sticks, and police batons; suspension, sometimes manacled, from cell doors and rods resulting in loss of consciousness; and cigarette burns. According to AI, police and prison officials used sexual assault and threats of sexual assault against the wives of Islamist prisoners to extract information, to intimidate, and to punish.

Charges of torture in specific cases were difficult to prove because authorities often denied the victims of torture access to medical care until evidence of abuse disappeared. The government maintained that it investigated all complaints of torture and mistreatment filed with the prosecutor's office, and noted that alleged victims sometimes accused police of torture without filing a complaint, which is a prerequisite for an investigation.

According to defense attorneys, local human rights groups, and AI, police routinely refused to register complaints of torture. In addition, judges dismissed complaints without investigation and accepted as evidence confessions extracted through torture. The government may open an administrative investigation of allegations of torture or mistreatment of prisoners without a formal complaint; however, it was unlikely in those cases to make the results public or available to the lawyers of affected prisoners.

Consistent with an effort to extract information or coerce confessions, more reports of torture came from pretrial detention centers than prisons. Human rights activists, citing prisoner accounts, identified facilities at the Ministry of Interior as the most common location for torture. Political prisoners and Islamists allegedly received harsher treatment than criminals.

Several domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia (CNLT) and the Association for the Fight Against Torture in Tunisia (ALTT), reported on multiple torture cases throughout the year. For example, on June 25, according to CNLT, 25-year-old Zied Ghodhbane appeared in court in a state of physical and psychological distress, bearing marks of abuse on his body. He reportedly testified that officials at the Ministry of Interior tortured him by beatings, electrocution, and holding his head under water in detention facilities at the interior ministry after his extradition from Algeria to the country. Defense lawyers for the accused requested that the judge recommend a medical examination, but the judge reportedly ruled that such a request should come from the general prosecutor.

In April authorities sentenced the "Bizerte Group," 11 defendants arrested in 2004 and charged with various terrorism-related crimes, to prison terms ranging from 10 to 30 years. On July 2, the court acquitted five of the defendants, while the remaining six received sentence reductions. The Committee of the Defense of Victims of the Law on Terrorism released multiple communiqués charging that authorities gathered confessions from the group using torture (see section 1.e.).

Authorities did not charge any police or security force official with abuse during the year.

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Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century- Trinidad & Tobago ", http://gvnet.com/torture/Trinidad&Tobago.htm, [accessed <date>]