Dar­ren Ba­haw

The is­sue of con­coct­ed, ex­ag­ger­at­ed civ­il as­sault cas­es filed by pris­on­ers seek­ing un­just com­pen­sa­tion from the State is now un­der a crim­i­nal probe.The lat­est de­vel­op­ment was an­nounced by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, SC, yes­ter­day, even as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan was or­dered by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­vis­it his probe in­to al­le­ga­tions of an "un­eth­i­cal busi­ness ven­ture" made by for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well re­lat­ing to pris­on­er abuse lit­i­ga­tion.

Giv­en the an­nounce­ment of an im­me­di­ate crim­i­nal probe, re­li­able gov­ern­ment sources said last night that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has been un­der crit­i­cism for twice re­fer­ring the mat­ter back to Ram­lo­gan for in­ves­ti­ga­tion, may find the per­fect ex­cuse to scrap her de­ci­sion and leave the mat­ter in the hands of the po­lice.There has been a cho­rus of ob­jec­tion against Ram­lo­gan's in­volve­ment in the probe or­dered by the Prime Min­is­ter, giv­en the role of his min­istry in the set­tle­ment of cas­es filed by pris­on­ers.

The Op­po­si­tion had called for his re­moval from of­fice pend­ing the probe and has threat­ened to take to the streets in demon­stra­tions if that was not done, while the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion has re­fused to meet with the team ap­point­ed by the PM, which com­prised the act­ing so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al Car­ol Her­nan­dez, chief state so­lic­i­tor Christophe Grant, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Em­manuel George, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Con­rad Bar­row, In­spec­tor of Pris­ons Daniel Khan, if the AG was in­volved.

A hint of the PM's re­view of her de­ci­sion was con­tained in a state­ment is­sued by the AG on Mon­day which an­nounced the post­pone­ment of the meet­ing of stake­hold­ers fol­low­ing the as­sas­si­na­tion of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal on Sun­day and the sum­mon­ing of an emer­gency meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to dis­cuss the mat­ter lat­er that day."The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will al­so use this pe­ri­od to give deep­er con­sid­er­a­tion to the con­cerns ex­pressed by the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion," the re­lease had said.

Suf­fi­cient ma­te­r­i­al

In his press state­ment yes­ter­day, Gas­pard said he was of the view that a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion was "the most pru­dent course" as the Po­lice Ser­vice was "the or­gan­i­sa­tion with the re­sources and in­ves­tiga­tive ex­pe­ri­ence for such a se­ri­ous task."On Au­gust 30 last year, Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well, who re­signed in Jan­u­ary, had com­plained to the PM of breach­es of pro­fes­sion­al ethics by at­tor­neys in­volved in prison abuse lit­i­ga­tion which "may have the ef­fect of per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­ferred her com­plaint back to Ram­lo­gan, who said he had in­ves­ti­gat­ed the mat­ter and found no ev­i­dence to sup­port the al­le­ga­tions­Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well had rec­om­mend­ed that the mat­ter be re­ferred to the In­spec­tor of Pris­ons, Law As­so­ci­a­tion and the Po­lice Ser­vice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In a three-page state­ment, Gas­pard said that hav­ing pe­rused the Feb­ru­ary 5 rul­ing of High Court Mas­ter Pa­tri­cia So­bion-Awai in the case of Ja­mal Sam­bury vs the State, and sup­port­ing court doc­u­ments, "I am of the un­flinch­ing view that there is more than suf­fi­cient ma­te­r­i­al con­tained there­in to war­rant an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the com­mis­sion of sev­er­al of­fences, in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice and con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the State of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He point­ed out that "in terms of the ac­cep­tance of any in­ves­tiga­tive find­ings, both in the courts of jus­tice as well as the court of pub­lic opin­ion, such a course pre­vents any un­fair al­le­ga­tion of bias be­ing made about the Of­fice of (the) At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or the in­cum­bent (Ram­lo­gan) and en­sures that any po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not in any way con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed."

Cut and paste in­fo

So­bion-Awai had made find­ings in the case of Sam­bury, a pris­on­er who claimed to have been beat­en by po­lice of­fi­cers at the hold­ing cell of the Princes Town Mag­is­trates Court in Oc­to­ber 2010, in­clud­ing false med­ical claims not sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence.While the State ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty in his case, it dis­put­ed the grav­i­ty of in­juries the pris­on­er claimed he sus­tained.

So­bion-Awai al­so raised con­cerns re­gard­ing the whole­sale "cut and paste" of in­for­ma­tion in Sam­bury's wit­ness state­ment from a sep­a­rate mat­ter in­volv­ing an­oth­er pris­on­er, Ja­mal For­tune, which were in­tend­ed to "mis­lead the court.""To my mind, it was im­plau­si­ble that two per­sons could ex­pe­ri­ence sep­a­rate events in­volv­ing dif­fer­ent per­sons in such an iden­ti­cal man­ner," So­bion-Awai stat­ed. The as­sess­ment of what Sam­bury is en­ti­tled to comes up for hear­ing on May 21.

Bring on probe

Both Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, the lead ad­vo­cate in the Sam­bury case, last night said they wel­comed the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and hoped for a speedy res­o­lu­tion.Speak­ing by tele­phone, Ram­lo­gan said: "I wel­come any in­ves­ti­ga­tion by any­one, any­where, any­time in­to this or any oth­er case so that the pub­lic can be re­as­sured that the le­gal busi­ness of the State is be­ing con­duct­ed with the ut­most in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty.

"It is my hope there will be a swift in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter be­cause it does not bode well for pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice."Ram­lo­gan said in the Sam­bury case, the lawyers from the so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al and chief state so­lic­i­tor de­part­ment would have to de­fend, jus­ti­fy and ex­plain the po­si­tion they adopt­ed in the mat­ter and "there­fore this in­ves­ti­ga­tion can on­ly lead to a vin­di­ca­tion of my min­istry."Ramdeen, in a sep­a­rate tele­phone in­ter­view, said he was "con­fi­dent that in the end my name will be cleared.

"I wel­come the in­ter­ven­tion of the DPP in this mat­ter to fi­nal­ly bring a res­o­lu­tion to all the ques­tions that have been asked," he added.