Yvonne Ba­boolal

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, through an at­tor­ney, has writ­ten to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs re­quest­ing con­fir­ma­tion as to whether he has been the sub­ject of spy­ing by the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA). The let­ter, which is re­port­ed to have caused shock waves in the po­lice ser­vice, was passed on to the Guardian by a se­nior of­fi­cer. At­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin, in the let­ter to Gibbs dat­ed 15 No­vem­ber, 2010, said, "I act for the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie." Delzin re­called the rev­e­la­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of wire-tap­ping and in­ter­cep­tion of tele­phone calls and e-mail cor­re­spon­dence of pri­vate cit­i­zens and those in pub­lic of­fice by the SIA un­der the au­thor­i­ty of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (over the past five years) and/or the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

"Among those per­sons whose names were pub­lished was the for­mer chief jus­tice, Sat Shar­ma, and his wife and son. "I am sure that you will cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the con­cerns of my client, that the sur­rep­ti­tious mon­i­tor­ing of the con­ver­sa­tions and cor­re­spon­dence of a sit­ting chief jus­tice is a mat­ter of grave con­cern, giv­en the con­fi­den­tial na­ture of the of­fice and the in­di­vid­ual ex­pec­ta­tion of re­spect for the of­fice hold­er's pri­va­cy, es­pe­cial­ly where there had al­so de­vel­oped con­tention be­tween the of­fice of chief jus­tice and the pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter dur­ing my client's tenure." Delzin fur­ther in­formed Gibbs, "The pur­port­ed acts of the SIA had the po­ten­tial of com­pro­mis­ing the con­fi­den­tial and del­i­cate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the chief jus­tice in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties con­cern­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

"In­deed, with­out more, such acts had the po­ten­tial to un­der­mine the pub­lic per­cep­tion of an in­de­pen­dent ju­di­cia­ry and con­fi­dence in its im­par­tial­i­ty." Delzin added, "Ac­cord­ing­ly, my client has in­struct­ed me to re­quest from your of­fice writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion as to whether he been the sub­ject of wire-tap­ping, in­ter­cep­tion of e-mails and/or mon­i­tor­ing by the SIA at any time. If so, whether there ex­ist any da­ta, records, and/or re­ports of the said ac­tiv­i­ties." Delzin told Gibbs he would be grate­ful if he re­sponds with­in one week. Con­tact­ed for com­ment last night, Delzin de­clined to throw fur­ther light on the let­ter or even to con­firm its ex­is­tence, cit­ing the need for at­tor­ney-client con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.