Sascha Wil­son

Jus­tice Vashiest Kokaram yes­ter­day re­fused bail to busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, but or­dered that they not be ex­tra­dit­ed to the Unit­ed States un­til the out­come of their con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings. This means that Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son would have to re­main be­hind bars at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison un­til the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their mo­tion which is fixed for hear­ing at the Port-of-Spain High Court on June 24.

Min­utes af­ter the rul­ing, how­ev­er, their at­tor­ney Fyad Ho­sein, SC, in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to ap­peal the judge's re­fusal to grant bail. The busi­ness­men were ar­rest­ed on Tues­day, days af­ter the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil re­fused to grant them leave to chal­lenge their ex­tra­di­tion to the US to face 95 charges re­lat­ing to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port Ter­mi­nal build­ing. They were not brought down from prison to at­tend their bail hear­ing yes­ter­day. In giv­ing his rul­ing in the San Fer­nan­do High Court, Kokaram said the court had to hold the scale of jus­tice even­ly be­tween the claimants and the State.

He said the State, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Kelvin Ramkissoon and Michael Quam­i­na, agreed that the court could ex­er­cise its dis­cre­tion to grant bail in the mat­ter but he want­ed to adopt a cau­tious ap­proach. He said he took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, among oth­er things, the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence, the sever­i­ty of the penal­ty for such an of­fence and pub­lic in­ter­est in the mat­ter. Ho­sein had ar­gued that in or­der to make prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion in chal­leng­ing the va­lid­i­ty of Sec­tion 16 of the Ex­tra­di­tion Act, he need­ed ready ac­cess to his clients. He said their first dead­line to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion on that mat­ter was next Mon­day.

He al­so ar­gued that his clients were en­ti­tled to bail, were not a flight risk and had com­plied with the con­di­tions of the pre­vi­ous bail. The judge said, how­ev­er, that the per­son­al in­con­ve­nience of at­tor­neys was not suf­fi­cient to war­rant the grant­i­ng of bail at this stage. Ramkissoon ar­gued that be­cause of the ad­vanced stage of the pro­ceed­ings, the busi­ness­men might be­come a flight risk. In grant­i­ng Ho­sein's re­quest for a con­ser­va­to­ry or­der pre­vent­ing the men's ex­tra­di­tion to the US pend­ing the out­come of the mo­tion, the judge said the mat­ter would be dealt with swift­ly.

The mo­tion hear­ing was ini­tial­ly set for Ju­ly 22, but he brought it up to next Thurs­day. Kokaram said it would be wrong to ex­tra­dite the men while the con­sti­tion­al mo­tion was still pend­ing. In the mo­tion, they are con­tend­ing that the pro­ceed­ings are un­just and op­pres­sive and in­fringe on their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Ho­sein, who was in­struct­ed by at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, al­so ques­tioned who au­tho­rised the de­ten­tion of his clients. He said that de­ci­sion rests sole­ly with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and not with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. "I don't know who au­tho­rised their de­ten­tion, but that is a mat­ter that is to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed," he said. Gal­barans­ingh's wife Cheryl was present in court.