Derek Achong

Sin­is­ter.

This was the word used by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, to de­scribe a con­tro­ver­sial state of af­fairs in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, which led to it fail­ing to file a de­fence in a $20 mil­lion ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit brought by nine of the men who were ac­quit­ted of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, Ar­mour said: “I would not al­low my­self at this time, be­cause of due process, to ut­ter what I think oc­curred, but it is sin­is­ter.”

Ar­mour sought to give a syn­op­sis of pre­lim­i­nary re­ports from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the case, which was or­dered by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young while he (Young) was act­ing AG while Ar­mour was at­tend­ing the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF) meet­ing in the Ba­hamas.

He said af­ter the case was filed in late May 2020, it was served on the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice a month lat­er.

He said the vo­lu­mi­nous file, a copy of which he dis­played to jour­nal­ists, was re­ceived by a min­istry em­ploy­ee and a file was opened for the case to be as­signed to a State at­tor­ney.

“Af­ter this, the file dis­ap­peared,” Ar­mour said.

He claimed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Sec­re­tari­at, which was es­tab­lished by his pre­de­ces­sor and cur­rent Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to man­age the work of the min­istry, was not in­formed of the case as re­quired and on­ly learned of it af­ter re­ports of the com­pen­sa­tion or­dered for the men by High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der on Mon­day.

“It sounds in­cred­u­lous and it de­mands an ex­pla­na­tion,” Ar­mour said, as he not­ed he was in the process of se­lect­ing a se­nior coun­sel to con­duct an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Deal­ing with his of­fice’s abil­i­ty to de­fend the case, had it been aware of it, Ar­mour claimed the ac­cused men would have had dif­fi­cul­ties prov­ing po­lice of­fi­cers did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to charge them and act­ed with mal­ice.

He point­ed to the fact that the men went through a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, in which a mag­is­trate ruled that the State had made out a pri­ma fa­cie case against them.

He said High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip, who presided over their tri­al be­tween 2014 and 2016, al­so re­ject­ed a no-case sub­mis­sion from the ac­cused af­ter pros­e­cu­tors closed their case against them. He al­so not­ed that two men, who were ini­tial­ly charged with the crime but were freed be­fore the case went to tri­al, lost a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case be­fore the Court of Ap­peal in 2012.

“There was a slam dunk de­fence avail­able to the State of T&T but for the fact that the file dis­ap­peared,” he said.

Ar­mour was guard­ed in his re­spons­es to ques­tions on the pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pre­lim­i­nary re­ports he re­ceived.

He de­clined to com­ment on why State at­tor­neys, who en­tered an ap­pear­ance in the case but did not file a de­fence, did not ap­ply for an ex­ten­sion while High Court Judge Joan Charles took sev­er­al months to ap­prove the men’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a de­fault judge­ment.

He al­so de­clined com­ment when asked how for­mer as­sis­tant so­lic­i­tor Karen Reid-Bal­lan­tyne, who was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge ear­ly this month, was able to par­tic­i­pate in the sub­se­quent as­sess­ment of dam­ages be­fore Mas­ter Alexan­der, with­out al­leged­ly hav­ing ac­cess to the case file.

“Let me make it clear, this is a very ear­ly stage and I do not want any­thing I say to be an in­dict­ment on any­one,” Ar­mour said.

While Ar­mour said he could not promise to make a redact­ed copy of the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port pub­lic af­ter it is com­plet­ed, he as­sured cit­i­zens he would an­nounce the key find­ings.

“On be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, I ac­knowl­edge this griev­ous de­vel­op­ment, which, in my view, needs to be ad­dressed frontal­ly and for which there needs to be full ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy,” he said, as he not­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be com­plet­ed ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

“There is to be a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter be­cause the pub­lic is owed an ex­pla­na­tion for what has oc­curred here,” Ar­mour said, al­so not rul­ing out an even­tu­al crim­i­nal probe.

In ad­di­tion to launch­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Ar­mour said he will be seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on whether the State can ap­peal the de­fault judge­ment and sub­se­quent as­sess­ment of dam­ages.

He said from his brief pe­rusal of the case file, there ap­peared to be valid grounds to do so. He al­so promised to con­sid­er whether to ap­ply for a stay of the judge­ments so the State will not be re­quired to pay the com­pen­sa­tion to the men and then seek to re­coup the mon­ey if it is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful on ap­peal.

On Mon­day, Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, their broth­er An­tho­ny Gloster, Joel Fras­er, Ronald Arm­strong, broth­ers Kei­da and Jameel Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham, and An­to­nio Charles were each award­ed $2.1 mil­lion in dam­ages, as Mas­ter Alexan­der as­sessed the com­pen­sa­tion in their case.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for the group, Mas­ter Alexan­der con­sid­ered the ev­i­dence of clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Isol­de Ghent-Gar­cia, who con­duct­ed de­tailed psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ments on all the men ex­cept Gloster, who was mur­dered in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in Diego Mar­tin in late 2021.

Gloster’s fa­ther was al­lowed to con­tin­ue to pur­sue the case and will now re­ceive the com­pen­sa­tion on be­half of his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing his two grand­chil­dren from his son.

In her re­ports, Ghent-Gar­cia said all eight men suf­fered from Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD), ma­jor de­pres­sion and gen­er­alised anx­i­ety, which was a di­rect con­se­quence of their spend­ing al­most a decade on re­mand be­fore be­ing freed.

Mas­ter Alexan­der al­so strong­ly con­sid­ered the “hor­ren­dous” prison con­di­tions they had to en­dure be­fore their even­tu­al re­lease.

Mas­ter Alexan­der al­so con­sid­ered the im­pact of the failed pros­e­cu­tion on the men’s rep­u­ta­tions. Say­ing the case drew loud pub­lic out­cry, Mas­ter Alexan­der not­ed that the men were teenagers or in their ear­ly 20s when they were charged.

The group was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Ganesh Sa­roop and Natasha Bis­ram.