The High Court will on Tuesday hear a habeas corpus writ brought on behalf of the 21-year-old Venezuelan woman who said she was raped and beaten by Coast Guard officers at the Heliport in Chaguaramas.
After the alleged assault, she stated in an application to the court that she was taken from the facility and dropped off at the side of the Western Main Road.
Her attorneys yesterday confirmed the matter will come up for hearing before Justice Westmin James.
The woman is currently detained at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in Aripo, but her lawyers are seeking to have the court order that she be released from the State’s custody and placed in the care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Last weekend Justice Jacqueline Wilson heard an emergency application and deemed the matter fit for urgent hearing.
In hearing the application, the judge directed that the Office of the Attorney General take the woman before a licensed medical doctor for examination; that the State file and serve the medical report before last Tuesday; and that she be granted access to attorneys of her choice.
In addition, the judge had 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 was to have her affidavit in response to the one by the State filed on or before last Friday.
The Sunday Express has been informed that all the documents have since been filed, which resulted in the court setting Tuesday for the hearing.
Had to be hospitalised
It was initially reported that the woman had escaped from the facility last month, but based on court documents filed by her attorneys, Criston J Williams, Bernadette Arneaud and Shivanand Mohan of law firm Quantum Legal on June 2, it was indicated that she was taken from the Heliport by officers there and dropped off at the side of the road.
The woman claimed that while detained at the facility she was assaulted and beaten by three officers.
Two of the officers held her down while the other raped her.
In the court documents, it was stated that the woman was raped and beaten so badly that she began “violently haemorrhaging” to the point that she had to be hospitalised for two days. But her hospitalisation only came after she made her way to a bar in Central Trinidad after being dropped off on the Western Main Road by the officers.
Upon her arrival at the business place, it was said that the owner of the bar took the woman for medical treatment.
When she was discharged from the medical facility, Central Division police went to the bar and detained her again before handing her over to the Immigration Department.
Her attorneys said they were informed by police officers at the Counter Trafficking Unit that the woman was no longer seeking legal representation.
They were also refused an audience with their client, they said.
But in spite of this, the lawyers proceeded to file their habeas corpus application because they feared the woman would be deported.
If this had been done, then there was a strong possibility those responsible for the rape and battery would have not been held accountable, since there would be no victim/witness to testify against them when criminal charges were brought.
It was at a 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 woman had gone missing after she reported being sexually abused at the immigration station at the Heliport.
Pitcher had also called for a probe into the facility.
The Heliport was set up in 2020 as an assessment centre for people found illegally entering the country’s borders, and as a Covid-19 quarantine centre for those illegal immigrants.