Senior Reporter
dareece.polo@guardian.co.tt
Criminal Bar Association president Israel Khan, SC, has accused Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard of failing to ensure the swift conclusion of the Dana Seetahal murder trial.
Seetahal, who was a senior counsel herself, was murdered at 12.05 am on May 4, 2014. She was driving her Volkswagen SUV to her home at One Woodbrook Place when two vehicles blocked the road, the occupants got out, and she was shot dead. The incident rocked the legal fraternity both locally and abroad.
Seetahal’s murder was initially believed to be related to her role as a junior prosecutor in the trial of 12 men accused of killing businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, who was shot dead in December 2006 and dismembered afterwards.
The trial started in March 2014 and while Khan, the lead prosecutor, and prosecutors Gilbert Peterson, SC, and senior state attorney Joy Balkaran were assigned security for two years, neither of them were attacked during the course of the trial.
In an interview with Guardian Media yesterday, Khan called it “atrocious” that his colleague’s case remains unsolved and lacks a clear motive.
“If anybody was going to be killed, it had to have been the main prosecutor, which would have been me and nothing happened to me. So, we do not know the motive for her brutal murder, we are yet to know why she was killed, so we are in abeyance about that,” Khan said.
He accused the Judiciary of causing the delays in the case because of when they submitted electronic copies of the committal bundles to the DPP.
The bundles contain over 8,100 pages. The Judiciary recently stated that the documents were sent in three parts via file transfer protocol on December 20, 2023, December 21, 2023, and January 5, 2024.
“The DPP could only indict them after he gets the hard copies and he reads it and so on and then he has to assign attorneys. This matter might take up six months to a year to determine in court, I do not know,” the senior counsel explained.
He added that the DPP also requires hard copies of exhibits to ensure that all the evidence in the matter had been provided. If he is not satisfied, the DPP can send the matter back to the magistrate until he is satisfied before he eventually determines what charges will be laid against the accused.
Nevertheless, Khan said both Gaspard and Archie owe the nation answers as to why this case has been languishing in the judicial system.
“They should have expedited this matter. It is about four years ago these men were committed. It is unfair to Dana Seetahal’s immediate relatives, friends, associates, the country at large and also the men who have been committed to stand trial. There’s a presumption that they are innocent until the state proves they are guilty beyond all reasonable doubt,” he said.
“It is a scandalous state of affairs. The whole of the Caribbean is watching this case and people in Canada, the United States, all over. If it could happen to Dana Seetahal, what about the ordinary person who has been brutally murdered?”
Seetahal’s family also raised the delay in the case during a release last week marking the 10th anniversary of her murder. They labelled it a betrayal of her legacy.
Guardian Media yesterday attempted to contact Chief Justice Archie through the Judiciary in order to clarify whether the hard copies of the bundles had been provided. However, there was no response from the Judiciary up to the time of publication.
Similarly, the DPP was contacted and messages were sent via WhatsApp, but there was no response from him either.
On July 25, 2015, 11 people including Rajaee Ali, his brothers, Ishmael and Hamid Ali, Devaughn Cummings, Ricardo Stewart, Earl Richards, Stephan Cummings, Kevin Parkinson, Leston Gonzales, Roget Boucher and Gareth Wiseman were charged for Seetahal’s murder. Cummings agreed to testify against his co-accused and became a State witness.
The 10 were then committed to stand trial in July 2020 by senior magistrate Indrani Cedeno, whose notes had to be certified and sent to the DPP. However, in January 2021, she was appointed a Master of the High Court and a High Court Judge in January 2024.