Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan will de­cide whether to re­fer the mat­ter in­volv­ing wire­tap­ping to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lay­ing charges. Ram­lo­gan was among sev­er­al oth­ers al­leged­ly be­ing se­cret­ly mon­i­tored by a unit known as the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA). A sub­stan­tial num­ber of names in­clud­ed peo­ple who were in­volved in lit­i­ga­tion against the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. Con­demn­ing the ac­tions of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ram­lo­gan said: "In my ca­pac­i­ty as AG I con­demn the ac­tions of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion in the strongest pos­si­ble terms. It un­der­mines the rule of law. It is a sin­is­ter dis­tor­tion of democ­ra­cy. It has breached the sa­cred so­cial pact be­tween the State and its cit­i­zens."

De­scrib­ing the lat­est rev­e­la­tion as a "dan­ger­ous twist," Ram­lo­gan said he was deeply con­cerned that sev­er­al of his clients he rep­re­sent­ed in pri­vate prac­tice were al­so be­ing mon­i­tored.

"I am hor­ri­fied by the rev­e­la­tion that my phone was tapped since 2005 be­cause back then most of my clients were with cas­es against the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and his gov­ern­ment. "This is a dan­ger­ous twist; it is fright­en­ing to think that a priv­i­leged and con­fi­den­tial con­ver­sa­tion be­tween a lawyer and his client could have been in­ter­cept­ed. This def­i­nite­ly com­pro­mis­es the pur­suit for jus­tice." He al­so won­dered about the amount of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to the SIA and the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit, adding that po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to op­er­ate with ob­so­lete equip­ment in the fight against crime.

Sir El­lis: More in­fo is need­ed

For­mer pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke is of the view that there may be a le­git­i­mate ex­pla­na­tion for His Ex­cel­len­cy George Maxwell Richards' tele­phone be­ing mon­i­tored by the SIA. Sir El­lis said: "We need to get the com­plete pic­ture and not play around with bits and pieces. When it was said his name was on a list, we must know what was the pur­pose. There can be all sorts of ex­pla­na­tions. I need to know ex­act­ly what are the true facts. I need to know much more than what was re­vealed be­fore I make a full state­ment."

Cit­i­zens seek­ing le­gal ad­vice

Mean­while, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands sev­er­al peo­ple who were be­ing mon­i­tored are now seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on how to pro­ceed. But ac­cord­ing to for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, Dana See­ta­hal, there must be suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to show that a cit­i­zen's rights were in­fringed. "If there is ev­i­dence that a per­son's rights were vi­o­lat­ed there could be a breach un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. If these peo­ple act­ed not on their own ini­tia­tive but on be­half of a State of­fi­cial it is pos­si­ble to bring an ac­tion against your Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights," See­ta­hal said. Re­fer­ring to a sim­i­lar case in Eng­land, See­ta­hal said un­der the Eng­lish Post Of­fice Act the wire tap­ping of tele­phones was le­gal. How­ev­er, it was lat­er con­sid­ered to be im­prop­er and the law was amend­ed. "It was the per­ceived op­po­nents of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment that were be­ing mon­i­tored. To say that it was done on the grounds for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sounds well ex­cept there is no leg­isla­tive ba­sis for do­ing it."