BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has made it clear that the Gov­ern­ment will up­hold the law when it comes to the death penal­ty, but said due process must be fol­lowed.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of sev­er­al coun­tries like Chi­na, In­dia, the Unit­ed States, Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia, which still re­tains the death penal­ty for any­one con­vict­ed of mur­der. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt, calls from cit­i­zens have in­ten­si­fied for the state to ap­ply the law.

“I re­al­ly wel­come the pub­lic’s ad­vo­ca­cy but I want to as­sure them that there is no re­luc­tance on the path of the Gov­ern­ment to see the law ap­plied,” Al-Rawi af­firmed.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, he said cit­i­zens must un­der­stand that the wheels of jus­tice have to be sped up be­fore un­rav­el­ling the rope.

“All as­pects of the sys­tem have to work. It is not a mat­ter of wak­ing up one morn­ing and say­ing, ‘Let us hang!’ It is a mat­ter of say­ing, why we can­not ap­ply the law and what are the el­e­men­tal pieces need­ed to be fixed,” ac­cord­ing to the AG.

Mean­while, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, not­ed that re­in­stat­ing the “hang­man” is not an easy task.

Dur­ing his tenure in 1999, Dole Chadee and oth­er mem­bers of his gang were hanged.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mur­der rate had de­creased af­ter the ex­e­cu­tions.

“I caused a study to be done to de­ter­mine whether if the death penal­ty was im­ple­ment­ed it would cause a re­duc­tion in the crime and it was in the af­fir­ma­tive”, Ma­haraj stat­ed.

He added, “My view is that we are liv­ing in dan­ger­ous times in which some of our cit­i­zens do not seem to have re­spect for hu­man life.

Ma­haraj fur­ther stat­ed, “It re­al­ly needs to send sig­nals to crim­i­nal el­e­ments that—lis­ten, if you com­mit the crime, we are go­ing to catch you, we are go­ing to pros­e­cute you. If it is to jail you, we will jail you and, if it is the death penal­ty, we are go­ing to car­ry out the death penal­ty!”

If re­peat of­fend­ers are not brought to jus­tice, Ma­haraj warned that crime will con­tin­ue to es­ca­late.

To reach the stage of the death penal­ty, Ma­haraj in­di­cat­ed that an ag­gres­sive plan had to be rolled out to en­sure those who com­mit­ted mur­der were con­vict­ed and all ap­peals are dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly. This he said was done through a Case Man­age­ment Unit.

Al-Rawi stat­ed that a sim­i­lar Case Man­age­ment Unit has been op­er­a­tionalised.

As of 2018, 42 pris­on­ers were on death row, how­ev­er, 12 of them could not meet the hang­man due to Pratt and Mor­gan.