Derek Achong

A lawyer who has been in­volved in sev­er­al re­cent prison abuse cas­es claims me­dia re­ports have un­fair­ly linked him to an un­eth­i­cal busi­ness ven­ture against the State. At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen yes­ter­day broke his si­lence on the is­sue, say­ing he has noth­ing to hide.His com­ments came even as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is set to com­mence his stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions on the con­tro­ver­sial prison lit­i­ga­tion is­sue.

On Mon­day, Ram­lo­gan an­nounced that the con­sul­ta­tions had been post­poned un­til fur­ther no­tice as a re­sult of the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal. The con­sul­ta­tions were or­dered by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­ter for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said re­cent­ly that she ex­pect­ed a probe in­to her claims should con­tin­ue.

Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well, in a lat­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar last Au­gust, had claimed there was an un­eth­i­cal busi­ness ven­ture be­ing con­duct­ed with­in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al but not­ed that it was be­ing done by ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys.Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Ramdeen, said he had been ob­serv­ing me­dia cov­er­age on the is­sue since last March in which his name was used.

"It is af­ter much trep­i­da­tion, re­flec­tion and great re­luc­tance that I am com­pelled to hold this press con­fer­ence to­day but it has be­come nec­es­sary for me to do so in or­der that I may clear my name and pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion of all that has been said in the pub­lic do­main," Ramdeen said.

He said dur­ing his 14-year ca­reer he had ap­peared in more than 200 as­sault and bat­tery cas­es in­volv­ing pris­on­ers. He said he con­tin­ues to take such cas­es be­cause he feels the prison sys­tem is "se­vere­ly com­pro­mised and chal­lenged" in terms of hu­man rights and re­spect for pris­on­ers."In many ways, the sys­tem is con­sti­tut­ed in a way that does not give the pris­on­er a sec­ond chance at be­ing a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen and lead­ing an hon­est life.

"In­stead, the sys­tem forces the pris­on­er in­to a prison cul­ture that in­ten­tion­al­ly ex­tin­guish­es any dream or prospect of that sec­ond chance," Ramdeen said.

Ready to de­fend name

Ramdeen said the re­ports which named him failed to con­sid­er the law­suits in which he was suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing com­pen­sa­tion for abused pris­on­ers and in­stead fo­cused on three in which pris­on­ers lost their claim."I am amazed that the fo­cus has thus far been on the mi­nor­i­ty of cas­es that pris­on­ers have lost, as op­posed to the de­bil­i­tat­ing and in­hu­mane con­di­tions and prac­tices that ex­ist in our prison to­day, which forces all in the sys­tem to be a vic­tim," he said.

He al­so not­ed that since the start his ex­ten­sive le­gal ca­reer, the Of­fice of the AG had been set­tling and los­ing prison cas­es, a fact which he said was con­firmed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Brid­get An­nisette-George in an in­ter­view with the me­dia on Mon­day."In fact, 71 per cent of High Court cas­es be­tween No­vem­ber 2005 and May 31, 2012, re­sult­ed in find­ings of abuse by agents of the State," he said.

Com­ment­ing on the High Court case of his client Ja­mal Sam­bury, which has been ref­ered to the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Ramdeen wel­comed the refer­al, say­ing he was ready to de­fend his rep­u­ta­tion and char­ac­ter."I have noth­ing to hide and would vig­or­ous­ly de­fend my good name against al­le­ga­tions, both pub­lic and pri­vate," he said. He al­so plead­ed with me­dia per­son­nel to re­frain from pub­lish­ing "prej­u­di­cial, bi­ased and dam­ag­ing" sto­ries while the is­sue was be­ing de­ter­mined.

When asked by re­porters to com­ment on al­le­ga­tions of "copy and past­ing" in wit­ness state­ments in pris­on­er abuse cas­es, Ramdeen re­fused to com­ment, cit­ing the com­mit­tee's pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.How­ev­er, his col­league Wayne Sturge, who al­so spoke, said: "I don't know any at­tor­ney who types up a doc­u­ment from scratch. If there are prece­dents, you start by us­ing your prece­dents and you delete and add as you see fit," Sturge said.

He said this was a nor­mal prac­tice for at­tor­neys who wished to save on time and meet dead­lines.