RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing for­mer se­nior jour­nal­ist, now spe­cial ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter, Sasha Mo­hammed, say they have ev­i­dence she nev­er sent threat­en­ing e-mails to Trinidad Ex­press ed­i­tor-in-chief Omatie Ly­der and re­porter An­na Ram­dass.A let­ter sent to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs, signed by at­tor­ney Ravi Ra­j­coomar, yes­ter­day stat­ed "such ev­i­dence" would be for­ward­ed to him on­ly on the con­di­tion he could jus­ti­fy the com­plaint was one which should have ever en­gaged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice or con­sti­tut­ed a crim­i­nal of­fence known to the laws of T&T.At­tor­neys Kelvin Ramkissoon and Jagdeo Singh al­so are rep­re­sent­ing Mo­hammed.The at­tor­neys al­so asked Gibbs to re­spond with­in three days, "hav­ing re­gard to the vor­tex of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty which the is­sues sur­round­ing this mat­ter have gen­er­at­ed."Al­most five months af­ter a re­port was made by Ly­der and Ram­dass that they re­ceived threat­en­ing e-mails by "Jan­ice Thomas" po­lice claimed they (e-mails) were sent from Mo­hammed's home com­put­er at the end of a probe on Fri­day.

The e-mails were sent in Jan­u­ary af­ter the news­pa­per pub­lished a sto­ry about the ap­point­ment of Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine as di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency.On Fri­day, po­lice is­sued a stern warn­ing to Mo­hammed who was in the com­pa­ny of at­tor­ney Om Lal­la at the CID of­fice.Ac­cord­ing to the law, it is a crim­i­nal of­fence to cause a per­son harm or dis­tress through ges­ture, di­rect­ly, ver­bal­ly, tele­phone, com­put­er, post or in any oth­er way.Such an of­fence, un­der Sec­tion 30A of the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act, car­ries a $10,000 fine and five years in prison or sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $5,000 and six months in prison.

Mo­hammed's at­tor­neys called on Gibbs to state the of­fence she al­leged­ly com­mit­ted, "since we are in­struct­ed that de­spite the ad­mo­ni­tion is­sued by the po­lice to her, cu­ri­ous­ly, no spe­cif­ic of­fence was iden­ti­fied."The let­ter stat­ed: "The po­si­tion of our client, how­ev­er, has been and con­tin­ues to be that she de­nies knowl­edge about the is­su­ing of the said pur­port­ed e-mails to the con­cerned par­ties and in this re­gard can­not be held cul­pa­ble."

Con­tents of the three-page let­ter re­peat­ed­ly de­mand­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the of­fence com­mit­ted.It al­so stat­ed none of the ba­sic pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ments were fol­lowed by the po­lice dur­ing Fri­day's in­ter­view.The let­ter added: "In the cir­cum­stances where the said po­lice of­fi­cers met with our client and is­sued a warn­ing to her, there would have had to be a ba­sis in law to do so."We there­fore now seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from you as to what is the spe­cif­ic of­fence which our client is al­leged to have com­mit­ted and the par­tic­u­lars there­of." It added the con­tents of Fri­day's in­ter­view had been "sur­rep­ti­tious­ly leaked" from the po­lice to the me­dia which led to "a ver­i­ta­ble me­dia fren­zy." The at­tor­neys called on Gibbs to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine who was re­spon­si­ble for such "atrans­gres­sion to the detri­ment of our client."

It is an of­fence

Se­nior Coun­sel Theodore Guer­ra said Mo­hammed's al­leged acts con­sti­tut­ed a crim­i­nal of­fence and the po­lice were wrong to rep­ri­mand her.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Guer­ra said: "The po­lice have the facts and they ought to pro­ceed to the courts and let a mag­is­trate come to a con­clu­sion.

"The po­lice were wrong."

He said while it was a prac­tice in polic­ing to use dis­cre­tion, the po­lice had no au­thor­i­ty to par­don a crime but to pros­e­cute per­sons who broke the law.At­tor­ney Os­borne Charles SC said it was a se­ri­ous crime which car­ried a penal­ty.Mean­while, at­tor­ney Daniel Khan said it was with­in the dis­cre­tion of a po­lice of­fi­cer in­ves­ti­gat­ing a com­plaint of a mi­nor crim­i­nal of­fence not to charge the al­leged of­fend­er but in­stead rep­ri­mand and warn."Send­ing a threat­en­ing e-mail to spe­cif­ic per­sons could amount to the crim­i­nal of­fence of com­mon as­sault," Khan said.