Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has writ­ten to Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley ask­ing her to ini­ti­ate a full, pub­lic in­quiry in­to the Brent Thomas mat­ter.

Thomas, a T&T cit­i­zen, was tak­en from a ho­tel room in Bar­ba­dos last Oc­to­ber 5 and de­tained be­fore be­ing hand­ed over to T&T po­lice of­fi­cers at the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, from where he was re­turned to T&T via a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tems air­craft.

T&T po­lice had told their Bar­ba­dos coun­ter­parts that Thomas was want­ed on sev­er­al war­rants for weapons-re­lat­ed charges.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who had promised sup­port­ers that she would pur­sue the mat­ter with Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley, out­lined the April 25 rul­ing of Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad in the Thomas civ­il case, as he re­ferred to ex­tra­di­tion leg­is­la­tion un­der the Ex­tra­di­tion (Com­mon­wealth and For­eign Ter­ri­to­ries) Act Chap­ter 12;04.

“There­fore, the rule of law and due process of law would have been eas­i­ly at­tain­able by fol­low­ing the process there­un­der. How­ev­er, that was not the process fol­lowed at all. In­stead, it is un­doubt­ed­ly an in­escapable in­fer­ence that the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force de­tained the first claimant up­on the re­quest of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, whether through ASP Birch or oth­er­wise. There was no oth­er rea­son giv­en as to why the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force would have de­tained him be­cause there was no ev­i­dence of any il­le­gal­i­ty com­mit­ted by the first de­fen­dant while in Bar­ba­dos, such as would have ren­dered him li­able for ar­rest and de­ten­tion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed out Jus­tice Ram­per­sad as not­ing in para­graph 167 of the rul­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar then made ref­er­ence to para­graph 169 of the rul­ing.

“Words can­not ex­press the ab­hor­rence that the court feels to­wards this un­law­ful act in a sup­posed civilised so­ci­ety gov­erned by a Con­sti­tu­tion in which the free­doms of the cit­i­zens are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed. The pre­am­ble to the Con­sti­tu­tion it­self al­ludes to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go recog­nis­ing that men and in­sti­tu­tions re­main free on­ly when free­dom is found­ed up­on re­spect for moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues and the rule of law while ex­press­ing the de­sire that the Con­sti­tu­tion should en­shrine the pro­tec­tion of fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights and free­doms.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed out that based on the find­ings, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad found, in­ter alia, “The ar­rest, de­ten­tion and forcible ab­duc­tion with­in, and the re­moval of the first claimant from the ju­ris­dic­tion of Bar­ba­dos to this coun­try, at the be­hest of the State of Trinidad and To­ba­go act­ing through its ser­vants and or agents, were gross­ly abu­sive, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, un­law­ful, un­nec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate and in par­tic­u­lar con­tra­vened the first claimant’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights guar­an­teed un­der sec­tion 4(a), (b) and (g) and sec­tion 5(2)(h) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and was oth­er­wise con­trary to the rule of law.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so not­ed that the air­craft used to re­turn Thomas to Trinidad was based in Bar­ba­dos and al­so made ref­er­ence to Bar­ba­dos At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Dale Mar­shall’s ad­dress to his coun­try’s Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, in which he said, “The Prime Min­is­ter and my­self in­deed the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos wel­come a full dis­til­la­tion and ven­ti­la­tion of all the facts sur­round­ing this mat­ter...”

She con­tin­ued, “The chill­ing facts out­lined in the judg­ment rep­re­sent a blotch in our na­tion’s democ­ra­cy. It rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns of ex­tra-ju­di­cial ex­er­cise of co­er­cive pow­ers by the law en­force­ment bod­ies of both our sov­er­eign na­tions. The se­ries of events in­volv­ing the ab­duc­tion of Mr Thomas calls for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. It has caused dam­age to the rep­u­ta­tion of both our na­tions, which sub­scribe to the fun­da­men­tal rule of law.”

On that note, Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the call for Mot­t­ley to ini­ti­ate the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“To re­store con­fi­dence and in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of our two na­tions, I re­spect­ful­ly call up­on you, as Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Bar­ba­dos, to ini­ti­ate a full, pub­lic in­quiry in­to this mat­ter.”

Her let­ter was al­so copied to the Bar­ba­dos AG, Bar­ba­dos Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Richard Boynes and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Im­ple­ment­ing Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Im­pacs), Lt Col Michael Jones.

On Wednes­day, T&T At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour apol­o­gised to the Bar­ba­di­an gov­ern­ment and the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force for what he deemed “the slur” cast on that is­land’s po­lice force, fol­low­ing its as­sis­tance to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in seek­ing to bring Thomas to jus­tice.

The State has ap­pealed the dis­missal of the crim­i­nal charges against Thomas and Ar­mour said a fur­ther ap­peal was lodged on Wednes­day be­fore the court to have it heard ur­gent­ly “for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons and to cor­rect the grave er­rors made by the tri­al judge.”

Ar­mour con­firmed the State has Eng­lish at­tor­neys in place in the event it needs to pro­tect T&T at the Privy Coun­cil lev­el.