Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour will to­day be fil­ing an ap­peal of the judge­ment in the Brent Thomas case, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

He said there have been at least half a dozen oc­ca­sions when op­er­a­tions sim­i­lar to the one in­volved in the is­sue have tak­en place .

At yes­ter­day's post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain, Row­ley rub­bished Op­po­si­tion claims about Gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in the mat­ter.

"The Cab­i­net had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with this mat­ter," he em­pha­sised.

Thomas, of Mar­aval, was at the cen­tre of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in 2022 and was ar­rest­ed on Oc­to­ber 5 in Bar­ba­dos while in tran­sit to Mi­a­mi. He filed a law­suit against the state and Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad's re­cent­ly ruled that Thomas was “un­law­ful­ly ab­duct­ed” when T&T and Bar­ba­dos po­lice of­fi­cers de­tained him in Bar­ba­dos.

Ram­per­sad said the man­ner of Thomas' de­ten­tion was an at­tempt to by­pass the law­ful pro­ce­dure of re­quest­ing his ex­tra­di­tion and halt­ed the crim­i­nal case against him.

Row­ley said he was ad­vised by Ar­mour that the state is tak­ing steps to ap­peal the mat­ter to­day and is seek­ing an ur­gent hear­ing be­cause the mat­ter is very im­por­tant to the pop­u­la­tion's in­ter­est. He said the AG is act­ing as the state's le­gal of­fi­cer in ad­vis­ing on the is­sue and it isn't a mat­ter in­volv­ing him or the Cab­i­net.

"I have noth­ing to an­swer for. As a mat­ter of fact I'm wait­ing to hear from the po­lice the an­swers to a lot of what is be­ing said and what they have to say about their own con­duct," he said

He said he hasn' yet re­ceived from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds the ex­pla­na­tion from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er that he had re­quest­ed. He said the Min­is­ter will have a re­port but at this junc­ture the state's ef­fort is at the AG's Of­fice in speak­ing to the court "on the whole bas­ket of facts."

Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed that he had on­ly learned and the is­sue in the me­dia.

"I have con­cerns about every as­pect," he said.

Not­ing that what was be­ing dealt with was a mat­ter of "arms' length po­lice work," Row­ley said the Cab­i­net isn't in the habit of di­rect­ing po­lice at any one or any agency.

He said there are two "prongs" in the mat­ter---that a CoP is re­spon­si­ble for di­rect­ing nor­mal po­lice work and in do­ing nor­mal on-go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions there are is­sues about the pro­ce­dures em­ployed by of­fi­cers.

In the face of the law and ac­cu­sa­tions by de­fen­dants, the po­lice are the on­ly peo­ple who can and will an­swer in court for their ac­tions.

"Not the Cab­i­net, not the Prime Min­is­ter," he added

Row­ley said he un­der­stood why peo­ple are ask­ing how on "such an im­por­tant mat­te ,Gov­ern­ment doesn't know." He said it is be­cause the po­lice are act­ing at arms' length from the ex­ec­u­tive.

"But I can tell you I've asked sim­i­lar ques­tions my­self and I've found out that on at least half a dozen oc­ca­sions sim­i­lar kinds of op­er­a­tions have tak­en place, so it's not the first time. So if there's some fault in it, we've dis­cov­ered or could dis­cov­er there's a fault, but it's not the first time.

"So to make it look as if it's some­thing the gov­ern­ment is do­ing now in the con­text of this par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tion is wrong. It's to­tal po­lice work. The po­lice would nev­er ask the Gov­ern­ment for clearence to do a war­rant. The po­lice has its di­rec­tions where to go for ad­vice and how to pro­ceed against a cit­i­zen who they be­lieve there's in­for­ma­tion to make a per­son of in­ter­est, or there's ev­i­dence to bring about an ar­rest or a war­rant for a search," he said.

Row­ley said the sit­u­a­tion wouldn't jeop­ar­dise se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos. He ac­cused the UNC of hav­ing no re­spect for the Bar­ba­dos Gov­ern­ment and crit­i­cised Sen­a­tor Wade Mark for his re­marks which he said were ir­re­spon­si­ble and in­im­i­cal to T&T's in­ter­ests.