Fran­cis Joseph

Did Cor­po­ral Ri­car­do De Four get a fair tri­al in Wash­ing­ton DC over the death of Unit­ed States cit­i­zen Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj?

Not so, says his fa­ther, Hol­lis De Four, who re­tired as se­nior man­ag­er (spe­cial projects) at the Cen­tral Bank.

Ac­cord­ing to De Four, vi­tal in­for­ma­tion which could have cleared his son of any in­volve­ment in the Ma­haraj kid­nap­ping was not hand­ed over by ei­ther the T&T De­fence Force or the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

De Four, who was the Cen­tral Bank's longest serv­ing em­ploy­ee at re­tire­ment, said long be­fore the start of the tri­al on May 26, his son's lawyers had re­quest­ed the in­for­ma­tion, but up to to­day, no in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed. Ri­car­do De Four and civil­ians Zion Clarke, Kevon De­merieux, An­der­son Strak­er, Wayne Pierre, Christo­pher Sealey and Kevin Nixon were found guilty by a ju­ry be­fore Judge John Bates in Wash­ing­ton DC on Ju­ly 31. They face life in prison with­out pa­role when sen­tence is passed on Feb­ru­ary 12 next year.

Ma­haraj, 62, a Trinida­di­an, was kid­napped at the Samaan Tree bar in Aranguez on April 6, 2005. His re­mains were found in two con­tain­ers in the San­ta Cruz for­est on Jan­u­ary 8, 2006. The US gov­ern­ment de­pend­ed heav­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer sol­dier, Ja­son Per­ci­val. But as far as Hol­lis De Four was con­cerned, Per­ci­val's tes­ti­mo­ny changed with the moon. "I nev­er be­lieved Per­ci­val's sto­ry, he kept chang­ing it from Trinidad to Wash­ing­ton...He was a man who for­got to re­mem­ber, and re­mem­bered to for­get," he said. De Four said he would nev­er for­get the day when his son was ar­rest­ed. He said he went to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion on Jan­u­ary 27, 2006, where his son was de­tained in con­nec­tion with Ma­haraj's death.

He said: "I was nev­er al­lowed to see him. I was ab­solute­ly shocked. That was not the son I knew. Based on what I knew of Ricky and his love for the army, and the peo­ple he was work­ing with, he could not have been in­volved in kid­nap­pings." De Four said he was pre­vent­ed from see­ing his son. The first time he was able to see Ri­car­do was when he ap­peared in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court charged with mur­der. De Four said he used to go to the Gold­en Grove Prison to see his son but that was be­fore he was ex­tra­dit­ed to the US to face tri­al for hostage-tak­ing. "Up to this day, I am still sur­prised at the whole thing," he said. "I sat in court and lis­tened to what Per­ci­val said about Ricky's in­volve­ment in kid­nap­pings. I still can­not be­lieve it."

De Four said ac­cord­ing to the in­ter­view notes tak­en by the po­lice from his son while in cus­tody, Ri­car­do was on du­ty at Camp Omega, Ch­aguara­mas, and did not leave there un­til 4 pm. Based on what Ri­car­do told his at­tor­neys, the sol­dier nev­er left camp un­til 7 pm, al­though Per­ci­val said Ri­car­do was present when the kid­nap­ping took place at 6.30 pm on April 6, 2005. Ac­cord­ing to De Four: "How was that pos­si­ble? If he left camp in Ch­aguara­mas at 7 pm, how could he be at Aranguez to kid­nap Ma­haraj at 6.30 pm? That is where he need­ed the in­for­ma­tion to clear Ricky?"

De Four said he tried his best to get the in­for­ma­tion from the De­fence Force, but every­where he turned, he met a closed door.

US in­ves­ti­ga­tor Joseph Aron­stamn came to Trinidad on three oc­ca­sions with two of Richar­do's US at­tor­neys–Joseph Beshouri and Jonathan Zuck­er–seek­ing the in­for­ma­tion, but all they got were promis­es.

In a doc­u­ment dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 9, "Chronol­o­gy of at­tempts to ob­tain doc­u­ments in US v Ri­car­do De Four," the in­ves­ti­ga­tor de­tailed dates of his un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to get his client's tri­al de­fence.

He wrote: "While in Trinidad (Jan­u­ary 28), I spoke with per­son­nel at var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies via tele­phone through­out the day, re­gard­ing ob­tain­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to Mr De Four. On the same day, US at­tor­ney Joseph Beshouri and I met with Camille Re­nie of the Le­gal Lai­son Of­fice for the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. We per­son­al­ly re­quest­ed doc­u­ments from her of­fice. We were told that the TTDF had them and would pro­duce them."

On May 4, the in­ves­ti­ga­tor said he met with lo­cal at­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land and ob­tained a let­ter from him, re­quest­ing doc­u­ments to be to sent to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. That let­ter, he added, was hand­ed over to the same Camille Re­nie. The fol­low­ing day, Aron­stamn and Zuck­er at­tempt­ed to meet with Re­nie, but that was un­suc­cess­ful. They re­turned lat­er in the day and met with Re­nie and asked for the doc­u­ments. Again, they were told that the TTDF had them. On May 7, the in­ves­ti­ga­tor and Zuck­er re­turned to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but could see no one. Two fur­ther at­tempts were made the fol­low­ing day to meet with Min­istry of­fi­cials, but they were un­suc­cess­ful. Aron­stamn stat­ed on May 13: "It was be­com­ing ap­par­ent to both Jon Zuck­er and my­self that both the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and to a less­er de­gree, the TTDF, were ei­ther ex­treme­ly slow in pro­duc­ing the doc­u­ments and pro­ceed­ing with an abun­dance of cau­tion, or pur­pose­ful­ly with­hold­ing valu­able ex­plana­to­ry doc­u­ments from us, and de­lay­ing their pro­duc­tion to where they could not be ful­ly utilised ef­fec­tive­ly by the de­fence."

On June 18, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­spond­ed to a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act for doc­u­ments that would es­tab­lish De Four's where­abouts on April 6, 2005, the day Ma­haraj was kid­napped.

The let­ter stat­ed in part: "Pleased be ad­vised that your ap­pli­ca­tion is cur­rent­ly be­ing processed. How­ev­er, the re­trieval and com­pi­la­tion of the re­quest­ed da­ta is not yet com­plete and there­fore, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is un­able to pro­vide a re­sponse with­in the stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od. "In this re­gard, you are kind­ly asked to al­low the Min­istry time be­yond the statu­to­ry lim­it­ed of 30 days (un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act) to fi­nalise your re­quest. It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that a re­sponse would be pro­vid­ed by Ju­ly 3, 2009."

Aron­stamn said he met with Re­nie again on Ju­ly 3 and was in­formed that the doc­u­ments were be­ing processed. All this time, the tri­al was on­go­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC. When Ri­car­do De Four took the stand on Ju­ly 15, he did not have the doc­u­ments need­ed to give him a sol­id al­i­bi.

What does Ri­car­do De Four need?

Ac­cord­ing to his fa­ther, the doc­u­ments would de­tail his de­par­ture time from Camp Omega on April 6, 2005. The doc­u­ments would al­so de­tail his where­abouts con­cern­ing three oth­er kid­nap­pings which Per­ci­val re­ferred to at the tri­al. Per­ci­val said Ri­car­do was in­volved in the kid­nap­ping of Dex­ter Jagdeo, Robin Ra­madar and Si­ta Ra­goo­nanan. De Four and his wife un­der­took the ex­pense of fly­ing to Wash­ing­ton DC and stay­ing in a ho­tel ten min­utes away from the court house so that they could sit in court every day of the two-month tri­al. He said lawyers in­di­cat­ed to the judge that they were hav­ing great dif­fi­cul­ty ob­tain­ing the in­for­ma­tion from the Trinida­di­an au­thor­i­ties. De Four said Judge Bates was ex­treme­ly pa­tient, al­low­ing the de­fence time to ac­quire the in­for­ma­tion.

But all is not lost. De Four said the de­fence has un­til Oc­to­ber 15 to make sub­mis­sions and pro­duce the doc­u­ments.

He said: "I have not lost hope at all. I still feel we can get the doc­u­ments which could prove that Ricky was at work when they say he was in­volved in the kid­nap­ping. Ricky did not get a fair tri­al, be­cause he was not able to pro­duce his de­fence. Maybe we could still get the doc­u­ments to save him." What could hap­pen if he re­ceives the doc­u­ments at this time? De Four said: "Ricky's lawyer said if we get the doc­u­ments, we can move to have a re­tri­al. And, a re­tri­al will be great for him, be­cause he will have his al­i­bi."

De Four said from the mo­ment his son was ar­rest­ed, the pros­e­cu­tion want­ed him as a wit­ness.

"Why would he be a wit­ness when he kept say­ing he was in­no­cent?" he said. "He knew noth­ing about this, he has main­tained his in­no­cence right through. What was sig­nif­i­cant, was that my­self and oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly were there in Wash­ing­ton to give him sup­port. We al­so want­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence a con­spir­a­cy tri­al in the US.

"I al­ways be­lieved in the fair­ness of the sys­tem, that cit­i­zens would be pro­tect­ed. It is be­yond me, that here we have some­one seek­ing his em­ploy­ee records to prove his in­no­cence, and an ex­cuse was giv­en that be­cause it was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, he could not get them. Here was a man who pro­tect­ed the State, who pro­tect­ed for­mer Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son, who drove for­mer Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Howard Chin Lee, and who pro­vid­ed ser­vices for per­sons like Bri­an Lara. "They have noth­ing bad to say about Ricky. We had ab­solute trust in the sys­tem un­til now."

More to­mor­row