At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was wrong when he claimed that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to wit­ness tam­per­ing al­le­ga­tions against his pre­de­ces­sor Anand Ram­lo­gan was ex­pect­ed to be­gin yes­ter­day.

When the case was called in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day, Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle and Ram­lo­gan’s de­fence at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC, both ex­pressed shock over Al-Rawi’s claims, made at a press con­fer­ence last Mon­day.

“It was news to me,” Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle said as the is­sue was raised by El­der.

El­der called on Al-Rawi to apol­o­gise over the claim, as she sug­gest­ed it gave cit­i­zens a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion the case would be­gin.

She al­so claimed it was prej­u­di­cial to Ram­lo­gan, as cit­i­zens may be­lieve the start of the case was de­layed by him.

In her brief sub­mis­sions, El­der not­ed that the State was not even ready to pro­ceed in the case, as it was still in the process of fil­ing wit­ness state­ments.

She al­so ques­tioned why State pros­e­cu­tors on­ly re­cent­ly filed state­ments for Al-Rawi and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West, as they had made the al­le­ga­tions against her client four years ago.

Al-Rawi men­tioned that he was sched­uled to sign his state­ment last Mon­day while speak­ing at the press con­fer­ence.

“I’ll be sign­ing, at the re­quest of the po­lice, a wit­ness state­ment on that mat­ter im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter this press con­fer­ence,” he said.

When asked by Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle to ex­plain why the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) failed to meet her pre­vi­ous dead­lines for fil­ing the state­ments, pros­e­cu­tor Mau­ri­ceia Joseph claimed the wit­ness­es were ill.

Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle gave the DPP’s Of­fice un­til April 18 to com­ply and not­ed that she would not al­low the State to file them past the new dead­line un­less it could bring ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy an­oth­er ex­ten­sion.

Ram­lo­gan is charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and with ob­struct­ing jus­tice. He is ac­cused of ob­struct­ing jus­tice by us­ing threats and bribery in Oc­to­ber 2014 to per­suade West to not give ev­i­dence in a defama­tion case he (Ram­lo­gan) filed against then op­po­si­tion leader and cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

He is al­so ac­cused of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice by im­prop­er­ly en­deav­our­ing for West not to tes­ti­fy on Row­ley’s be­half. He was placed on $350,000 bail when he first ap­peared in court in 2017.

Even with the charges against him, Ram­lo­gan has con­tin­ued to prac­tice, as the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion can on­ly take ac­tion against him in the event he is even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed.

British Queen’s Coun­sel Ed­ward Jenk­ins has been re­tained to pros­e­cute the case on be­half of the State.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for an­oth­er sta­tus hear­ing on April 30. —Derek Achong