Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is de­fend­ing the con­tin­ued use of vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ances at po­lice sta­tions, in­sist­ing the prac­tice is legal­ly ground­ed, care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed, and es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ing jus­tice ef­fi­cient­ly. He warned against what he called a carte blanche re­jec­tion of the sys­tem, call­ing such crit­i­cisms ill-in­formed and po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful to pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said, “It is re­al­ly a ret­ro­grade step to just in a carte blanche way say vir­tu­al court shouldn’t hap­pen from po­lice sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the TTPS is on record as hav­ing com­plained that there is a dif­fi­cul­ty in the at­ten­dance of po­lice of­fi­cers from time to time to mat­ters.”

Al-Rawi, who served as at­tor­ney gen­er­al and min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs from 2015 to 2022, said the ground­work for vir­tu­al hear­ings was laid long be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, though the pan­dem­ic ac­cel­er­at­ed its ex­pan­sion.

“As at­tor­ney gen­er­al and min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, I had the priv­i­lege of pi­lot­ing the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, the Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren Di­vi­sion … We in­tro­duced vir­tu­al courts as a fea­ture of the law in 2016 and 2017. COVID came and catal­ysed its in­tro­duc­tion, but the sys­tem was al­ready there,” he said.

He said vir­tu­al hear­ings were part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to mod­ernise the jus­tice sys­tem and re­duce in­ef­fi­cien­cies. “We amend­ed the en­tire sys­tem of the law,” he said. “There was once a cry … about pris­on­er trans­porta­tion. If you re­call, that was a huge cost. Every­body com­plained about $40 mil­lion a year, $60 mil­lion a year. We as a gov­ern­ment had the plea­sure of open­ing vir­tu­al courts in the pris­ons, stop­ping the move of pris­on­ers.”

He not­ed that prop­er safe­guards and pro­to­cols are in place.

He said, “The Ju­di­cia­ry isn’t a mat­ter of 15 peo­ple hid­ing be­hind a com­put­er and one per­son in front of it, and that per­son has a gun or a whip.” “The Ju­di­cia­ry has spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols for ap­pear­ances—the room, the man­ner in which the court sees the ac­cused, the in­ter­ro­ga­tion. We didn’t just throw away the ap­pear­ance of an ac­cused be­fore a Jus­tice of the Peace or the rules of ev­i­dence.”

Al-Rawi al­so crit­i­cised re­cent head­lines and pub­lic com­men­tary that he be­lieves over­sim­pli­fy the is­sue.

“The one-lin­ers can take us in­to a very dan­ger­ous place,” he said. “I think we need to do some deep­er delv­ing in­to mat­ters like this.”

His de­fence came in re­sponse to re­cent com­ments by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, who ex­pressed con­cern over po­lice sta­tions be­ing used for vir­tu­al court hear­ings.

Speak­ing af­ter a meet­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Alexan­der said, “The courts of T&T have tak­en pos­ses­sion of po­lice sta­tions na­tion­wide, and it is some­thing we need to ad­dress al­most ­im­me­di­ate­ly.” He said po­lice are al­ready cramped for space and sug­gest­ed the fa­cil­i­ties could be bet­ter used for op­er­a­tional needs.

“There are things that could be done with that space. Like the in­stal­la­tion of strate­gic rooms and all of that. So, we need to treat with that is­sue. That can­not con­tin­ue. And I don’t sug­gest that it should,” Alexan­der re­port­ed­ly said.

Al-Rawi, how­ev­er, said no such com­plaints had ever been raised be­fore. “Not even once since 2016. The po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tion in their sec­ond di­vi­sion, their body—I can’t say union—but their as­so­ci­a­tion, has nev­er com­plained about this. Jus­tices of the Peace, the Crim­i­nal Bar, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, per­sons in­volved in the user feed­back—no one raised it.”