Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is ex­press­ing con­cern over a po­ten­tial fall­out in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­tra­di­tion re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, as he ques­tions the han­dling of the on­go­ing ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er.

Al-Rawi, who served as AG from 2015 to 2022, said he per­son­al­ly signed ex­tra­di­tion or­ders dur­ing his tenure and is now seek­ing clar­i­ty on what cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has or­dered a probe in­to, as well as the ad­di­tion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion Warn­er’s lawyers are re­port­ed­ly re­quest­ing in his le­gal bat­tle to avoid be­ing sent to face charges in the US. He be­lieves this can set a prece­dent for oth­er peo­ple to chal­lenge their ex­tra­di­tions to the US.

Al-Rawi’s com­ment came hours af­ter it was re­vealed Je­re­mie had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s han­dling of the ex­tra­di­tion re­quest for Jack Warn­er. The move came af­ter Warn­er’s le­gal team, led by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, ques­tioned the ex­is­tence of doc­u­men­ta­tion out­lin­ing an al­leged arrange­ment de­tail­ing the spe­cif­ic crim­i­nal charges Warn­er would face if ex­tra­dit­ed. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s le­gal team lat­er ad­mit­ted that the doc­u­ment could not be found and may nev­er have ex­ist­ed.

But Al-Rawi yes­ter­day con­tend­ed that doc­u­ments which speak to any “spe­cif­ic” arrange­ment are not in keep­ing with this coun­try’s ex­tra­di­tion process with the US.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of- Spain, Al-Rawi said T&T has been a des­ig­nat­ed ex­tra­di­tion part­ner of the US since 1996, and has ho­n­oured all ex­tra­di­tion re­quests to date, a fig­ure he placed at just un­der 50.

As it per­tains to any ac­com­pa­ny­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, the for­mer AG added, “And what Trinidad and To­ba­go has done for the many decades, is that it has signed some­thing called a spe­cial­ty cer­tifi­cate is­sued un­der sec­tion 8 (5) of the law. And that spe­cial­ty cer­tifi­cate says that the at­tor­ney gen­er­al cer­ti­fies that you will not be ex­tra­dit­ed for mat­ters to be pros­e­cut­ed broad­er than what you’re be­ing sent for and what­ev­er else the law ap­plies for.”

He added, “It does not say that an arrange­ment must be in writ­ing. It does not spec­i­fy the na­ture of that arrange­ment.”

Al-Rawi then re­ferred to a Ju­ly 2024 af­fi­davit from for­mer Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty head Graeme Mc­Clean, in the High Court mat­ter be­tween Warn­er and the AG of T&T, which he said, “demon­strates that the is­suance of the spe­cial­ty has been the stand­ing prac­tice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice since the law came to be in the form that it is.”

He ex­plained that this meant no ad­di­tion­al spe­cial arrange­ment or doc­u­men­ta­tion, as en­quired about by Warn­er’s le­gal team, was nec­es­sary.

Al-Rawi claimed that Je­re­mie signed a few ex­tra­di­tion re­quests while serv­ing as AG un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and fol­lowed the same pro­ce­dure.

This is why Al-Rawi said he is now ques­tion­ing what is spe­cial about Warn­er’s case.

Ref­er­enc­ing Mc­Clean’s af­fi­davit ev­i­dence, which he had with him, Al-Rawi said, “He (Mc­Clean) says the stand­ing spe­cial arrange­ment was re­flect­ed in cer­tifi­cates is­sued by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the same as spe­cial­ty cer­tifi­cates is­sued by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­als, and that in Warn­er’s mat­ter. I have not had, nor have had any rea­son to be­lieve that the stand­ing spe­cial­ty arrange­ment, which has been in place for years, was not fol­lowed and will not be fol­lowed.”

At­tached to the af­fi­davit was a diplo­mat­ic note dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 2023 from the US Em­bassy, which as­sured, “If he, mean­ing Mr Warn­er, is re­turned to the US, quote, he will not, un­til he has left or has been free to leave the USA, be de­tained, pros­e­cut­ed, or pun­ished for any of­fence com­mit­ted be­fore his re­turn, oth­er than A, the of­fences for which he was ex­tra­dit­ed, B, a less­er of­fence or of­fences proved by the facts proved be­fore mag­is­trate on the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings lead­ing to his re­turn, or C, any oth­er of­fence, of­fences, be­ing an ex­tra­di­tion of­fence for which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al may con­sent to his be­ing so dealt with.”

Al-Rawi said while Warn­er is “per­fect­ly en­ti­tled” to chal­lenge his ex­tra­di­tion, he be­lieves the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion will set a prece­dent for all ex­tra­di­tion or­ders to be chal­lenged in the same way.

He is al­so con­cerned how this will be per­ceived by the US, which on­ly yes­ter­day hailed the strong re­la­tion­ship with this coun­try af­ter T&T na­tion­al Shurlan Gup­py was ex­tra­dit­ed to the US to face fed­er­al charges re­lat­ed to drug traf­fick­ing.

“The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca sure­ly must take note and ought to be and will be very con­cerned that Trinidad and To­ba­go is now putting at risk all ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings that have passed al­ready.”

He added, “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is a very im­por­tant part­ner for the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are in a State of Emer­gency, folks traf­fick­ing in weapons, in firearms, traf­fick­ing in hu­mans, eco­nom­ic crimes, drug of­fences, mur­ders, sex­u­al of­fences. All of these are ex­tra­ditable of­fences that the US usu­al­ly deals with,” he said.

Al-Rawi is al­so con­cerned that the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion changed out the state’s le­gal team in the mat­ter, adding the new lawyers are said to be less ex­pe­ri­enced than their pre­de­ces­sors.

Asked if he be­lieves this is a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to block the ex­tra­di­tion of Warn­er, who was a ma­jor as­set in the UNC’s suc­cess­ful push to win the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Al-Rawi said, “I cer­tain­ly can’t make a state­ment on that be­cause that would be some­thing that we need to pay very care­ful at­ten­tion to. That is a very di­rect, sala­cious con­clu­sion to come to that I am sure many peo­ple are think­ing or won­der­ing about. I can on­ly re­ly up­on the facts as I have them right now.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a com­ment from the US Em­bassy and the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice on this re­cent de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, but no re­spons­es were forth­com­ing up to press time.