Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan has been elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion.

Khan was elect­ed un­op­posed dur­ing an elec­tion at the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day.

Ul­ric Sker­ritt was elect­ed vice pres­i­dent with Wayne Sturge and John Heath serv­ing as Sec­re­tary and Trea­sur­er, re­spec­tive­ly.

Ravi Ra­j­coomar, Om Lal­la, Mario Mer­ritt, Cedric Nep­tune, and Daniel Khan were elect­ed as se­nior or­di­nary mem­bers while Alex­ia Romero, Kel­ston Pope, Gabriel Her­nan­dez, Da­hen­sia Yaseena, and Aris­sa Ma­haraj were elect­ed as ju­nior or­di­nary mem­bers.

In a short ad­dress af­ter the new ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee was in­stalled, Khan point­ed out sev­er­al is­sues with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which he said his team would ad­vo­cate about.

He not­ed there needs to be the cat­e­go­riza­tion of mur­der in­to dif­fer­ent de­grees, a pa­role sys­tem. and prop­er staffing for the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

“He how­ev­er not­ed that an ac­cused charged with mur­der is forced to re­main in­car­cer­at­ed and await a pe­ri­od of over 10 to 15 years be­fore ob­tain­ing a tri­al and this was scan­dalous and shame­ful for a coun­try that em­braces the sacro­sanct prin­ci­ple of the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence,” a press re­lease stat­ed.

Khan al­so called for nine se­nior crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­neys to be el­e­vat­ed to Se­nior Coun­sel to as­sist in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice as he not­ed that he was among on­ly six ac­tive “silks” at the crim­i­nal bar.

He said that some of the is­sues would be raised and dis­cussed when the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive meets with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, in the fu­ture.