Derek Achong

A Cunu­pia man is set to re­ceive over $280,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, af­ter a High Court Judge up­held his ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit over be­ing charged for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and im­por­ta­tion al­most a decade ago. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in his case, Kurt Pas­call was at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on March 9, 2012, when he was ap­proached by an of­fi­cer of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion who ar­rest­ed him. 

Pas­call was hand­ed over to an of­fi­cer of the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­N­FU), who took him to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion. 

Pas­call was de­tained for sev­er­al days, dur­ing which time sev­er­al of his rel­a­tives’ homes were searched by po­lice. 

He was even­tu­al­ly charged with the two of­fences. 

Pas­call was re­mand­ed for 43 days be­fore he was even­tu­al­ly grant­ed bail. 

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) dis­con­tin­ued the charges against him.

In de­fence of the law­suit, at­tor­neys for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Cus­toms of­fi­cer claimed that there was rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect that Pas­call was guilty of the of­fences. 

They claimed that short­ly be­fore his ar­rest, the Cus­toms of­fi­cer had rea­son to stop a fe­male pas­sen­ger who had just ar­rived on a flight from Ja­maica. 

The of­fi­cer then al­leged­ly found a bag of mar­i­jua­na weigh­ing 1,927 grammes hid­den in the lin­ing at the bot­tom of the pas­sen­ger’s suit­case. 


The pas­sen­ger claimed that her friend, Pas­call, who was pick­ing her up at the air­port, made arrange­ments for her to col­lect the suit­case from a man in Ja­maica and trans­port it to Trinidad. 

The woman then point­ed Pas­call out to the of­fi­cer and her col­leagues, lead­ing to his ar­rest.

Pas­call’s case was up­held by High Court Judge Ricky Rahim fol­low­ing a brief tri­al on Tues­day. 

Rahim ruled that the Cus­toms of­fi­cers did not have a ba­sis for charg­ing Pas­call and in­ferred that they act­ed with mal­ice based on their con­duct in the case. 

He or­dered $20,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for his un­law­ful de­ten­tion and $240,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, plus in­ter­est for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. 

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Pas­call’s le­gal costs for the law­suit. 

Pas­call was rep­re­sent­ed by Tim Char­riandy while Kendra Mark rep­re­sent­ed the State.

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