Geisha Kow­lessar

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has come to the de­fence of Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son, say­ing he is more than ca­pa­ble to con­duct a probe in­to a se­ries of e-mails which al­leged­ly im­pli­cat­ed top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in a con­spir­a­cy to per­vert the course of jus­tice.He said there is no rea­son to doubt Richard­son's qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said from day one of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul had been ad­vis­ing the po­lice, in­clud­ing Richard­son, on how to pro­ceed with the mat­ter.To at­tack the com­pe­tence of the Po­lice Ser­vice there­fore, Ram­lo­gan added, was to al­so at­tack the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Po­lice Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) as both arms have been work­ing hand-in-hand to seek an­swers.

"The at­tacks against DCP Richard­son have been scan­dalous, reck­less, ir­re­spon­si­ble and down right dan­ger­ous."These com­ments are de­signed to do dam­age by any means nec­es­sary, even if it means de­stroy­ing the pub­lic con­fi­dence and morale of the Po­lice Ser­vice," Ram­lo­gan added.The e-mails were raised in Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Gov­ern­ment on May 20.

Row­ley said he had the in­for­ma­tion in his pos­ses­sion for six months but had not re­ferred it to the po­lice cit­ing a lack of con­fi­dence.At a press con­fer­ence held last Thurs­day at the Op­po­si­tion Leader's of­fice, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the PNM, sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, called for the probe to be quashed be­cause he said Richard­son is the wrong man for the job.Ram­lo­gan, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed Richard­son say­ing he was ful­ly com­pe­tent. He added the se­nior cop held no po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

"There is no rea­son for any­one to doubt the in­de­pen­dence and com­pe­tence of the of­fice of the DPP. In light of the fact that one of the al­le­ga­tions con­cerns the of­fice of the DPP, one would ex­pect the deputy DPP and Mr Richard­son to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion."One would ex­pect the po­lice and the deputy DPP to be alive to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this was a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy hatched by the PNM and the an­swers could be lo­cat­ed in the bo­som of the PNM," Ram­lo­gan added.

He said Richard­son was ap­point­ed as DCP un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and was pre­vi­ous­ly un­known to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship."Be­fore I came in­to of­fice I nev­er heard or saw Mr Richard­son," Ram­lo­gan said.Ram­lo­gan said he hoped the po­lice searched Row­ley's com­put­er and oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vices to de­ter­mine where the e-mails em­anat­ed.

"The in­ves­ti­ga­tion can­not pro­ceed on the pre­sump­tion of guilt against a prime min­is­ter and at­tor­ney gen­er­al and the as­sump­tion of in­no­cence in re­la­tion to Dr Row­ley."I am sur­prised that he is sur­prised that they (po­lice) asked for ac­cess to his com­put­er," Ram­lo­gan said.On the fact that Richard­son ob­tained copies of the e-mails from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as claimed by Al-Rawi, Ram­lo­gan de­scribed this was "fool­ish and non­sen­si­cal."

"The en­tire coun­try knows the Prime Min­is­ter re­quest­ed a copy of the doc­u­ments from Dr Row­ley in Par­lia­ment dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion. The doc­u­ments were passed to the clerk of the House and trans­mit­ted to the Prime Min­is­ter."When the Prime Min­is­ter wrote to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er she at­tached the doc­u­ments to the let­ter. To make an is­sue out of that is grasp­ing at straws."

Ram­lo­gan said he is ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned by the po­lice to­day.