Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has expressed concerns about the wisdom of the raids by the police at the homes of Ruel Reid and President of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) President Fritz Pinnock Wednesday, morning (Oct 9).

Reid, his wife Sharen, their daughter Sharelle and Pinnock are now in custody after members of the Major Organised Crime and Anti Corruption Agency (MOCA) swooped down on their homes before daybreak. They are expected to remain behind bars overnight.

Chuck questioned why the raids had to be carried out before dawn as none of the detainees had shown any intent to flee from justice.

“It is so unfortunate that the arrests took place which looks like a Nicodemus in the night [situation]. I don’t get the impression that these persons are actually running away. They have made themselves available on all occasions, so, in fact, if an arrest needed to have been made, they could have asked them to come in so that they could be charged,” Chuck said.

Chuck said if the detainees could have been granted their own bail or asked to surrender their travel documents.

“I think it is unfortunate that it has become so salacious, in that… you put so many [police] at these persons’ gate,” said Chuck who was speaking to reporters at a child sensitisation seminar this morning.

He agreed with Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips, that the investigations were taking an inordinately long time.

“Come to a conclusion. If you don’t have the material, report that you don’t have enough material to charge, but if you go and you charge on very limited evidence the end result may be that the cases may not go very far and that would undermine the sort of confidence that you would have in the institution if you proceed to charge on very limited evidence and the cases turn out to be weak. At the end of the day we must be very professional in what we do,” he Chuck.