Gail Alexan­der

“We hear you, we share your pain.”

That was the re­sponse to an­ti-vi­o­lence pro­tes­tors and those at vig­ils from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi who has re­dou­bled a push for the re­turn of the hang­man.

“We guar­an­tee we’ll do our part but the Op­po­si­tion’s re­fusal to help pass laws to pro­tect you, the pub­lic, has shown they’re not hear­ing you,” he said.

Al-Rawi said there’s no An­ti-Gang law to go af­ter peo­ple who may have aid­ed or en­abled mur­der sus­pects in the An­drea Bharatt case since the Op­po­si­tion re­fused to sup­port the An­ti-Gang Bill last year.

Al-Rawi spoke af­ter the main sus­pect in the death of Bharatt died yes­ter­day.

Bharatt’s body was found last Thurs­day in the Heights of Aripo.

She dis­ap­peared Jan­u­ary 29 af­ter en­ter­ing a ve­hi­cle in Ari­ma. The ve­hi­cle had car­ried false “H” li­cense plates.

Four sus­pects were sub­se­quent­ly de­tained by po­lice, in­clud­ing one who was di­a­bet­ic and hy­per­ten­sive, he lat­er died. The oth­er - the key sus­pect - died yes­ter­day.

Protests call­ing for jus­tice for Bharatt and stronger laws con­tin­ued in front of the Red House yes­ter­day.

Blames Op­po­si­tion

Yes­ter­day Al-Rawi ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of “ly­ing, edit­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing” a video which gave a com­plete­ly false im­pres­sion of what he said last week in Par­lia­ment on vig­ils.

“Any­one can see from Par­lia­ment’s video footage what I said as op­posed to the unadul­ter­at­ed lie the UNC put out. I had con­demned the UNC for shed­ding croc­o­dile tears on the mur­der in­stead of com­ing to Par­lia­ment and do­ing their du­ty to sup­port law which can pre­vent mur­ders. My state­ment spoke square­ly to the UNC, not mourn­ers.”

“To those ex­press­ing your­selves, I deeply em­pathise with your pain. We hear the cries, see the rivers of tears. We urge you to con­tin­ue rais­ing your voic­es to call for every­one to work and sup­port the nec­es­sary bills for every­one’s pro­tec­tion.”

“The peo­ple must be heard. I’d al­so like to en­cour­age peo­ple to get the in­for­ma­tion on what is be­ing said. I”m grate­ful they sup­port pro­pos­als on bail and the Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Bill. We can on­ly hope the UNC al­so lis­tens to the voice of the peo­ple who they’ve of­ten said is the voice of God.”

“There was a con­sis­tent pat­tern by UNC to refuse sup­port on laws to pre­vent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. I say to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the An­ti-Gang law is nec­es­sary. It can treat with con­spir­a­cy, kid­nap­ping, mur­der but this re­quires Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

The Wit­ness Anonymi­ty Or­der is nec­es­sary to pro­tect wit­ness­es. And every case re­quires ev­i­dence. Fail­ure to sup­port that Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Bill last Fri­day was a dag­ger to every cit­i­zen’s heart - please stop abus­ing the peo­ple!”

On hang­ings and non-lethal weapons

He said the calls for cur­tail­ing bail for rape ac­cused can be ex­am­ined by the bail law but it re­quires 26 votes for pas­sage and Gov­ern­ment on­ly has 22 votes.

“There seems to be a timid­i­ty and re­luc­tance by peo­ple to call out the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port it,” he said.

He’s con­tin­u­ing push­ing for the re­sump­tion of hang­ing.

Al-Rawi said the time­frame for Death Row pris­on­ers’ ap­peal process­es in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums is de­lay­ing the sit­u­a­tion. But he said Gov­ern­ment has made nu­mer­ous im­prove­ments to the jus­tice sys­tem to clear back­logs and ex­pe­dite mat­ters lo­cal­ly.

On calls for non-lethal weapons for women, Al-Rawi said the Prime Min­is­ter had that mat­ter un­der watch and it will be the sub­ject of pub­lic in­for­ma­tion as soon as the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Cab­i­net fin­ish fi­nal de­lib­er­a­tions.