Derek Achong

A se­nior lawyer has re­port­ed a mag­is­trate for her role in al­leged­ly de­lay­ing the coro­ner’s in­quest in­to the death of a man, who was killed by po­lice over a decade ago.

In a let­ter sent to Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, who is rep­re­sent­ing the three po­lice of­fi­cers be­fore the in­quiry, com­plained over the in­or­di­nate de­lay in start­ing the process.

De­scrib­ing the case as the “most frus­trat­ing and dif­fi­cult” in his ca­reer, Khan said: “It has caused me to have to chal­lenge the bound­aries of the slow wheels of jus­tice in this ju­ris­dic­tion as I know it and far be­yond any I have ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.”

While Khan ad­mit­ted that oth­er mag­is­trates, who had con­trol over the case, con­tributed to the de­lays, he claimed that Mag­is­trate Re­hana Ali ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lem by fail­ing to quick­ly rule on a pro­ce­dur­al is­sue caused by the death of po­lice com­plainant.

Khan wrote the let­ter af­ter a hear­ing last week, in which Ali stat­ed that she could not com­mence the case un­til the Po­lice Ser­vice se­lect­ed an of­fi­cer to serve as a sub­sti­tute com­plainant. She ad­journed the case to De­cem­ber 5.

In his let­ter, Khan quot­ed Sec­tion 10 of the Coro­ners Act, which he said, em­pow­ered Ali to con­duct the en­quiry with­out the pro­ce­dur­al is­sue be­ing de­ter­mined.

“I am of the firm opin­ion that her in­ter­pre­ta­tion and un­der­stand­ing of the Act is er­ro­neous and mis­guid­ed,” Khan said.

As he called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the de­lays in the case, Khan said he would refuse to ap­pear at the next hear­ing un­less Ali starts the case then.

Khan al­so called on Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle to re­con­sid­er the cur­rent coro­ner’s in­quest sys­tem.

“Mag­is­te­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence at the Coro­ner’s Court is one of the is­sues which needs to be ad­dressed, in­clud­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of all Coro­ners who now sit on the Bench and the length of time it takes for an in­quest to be com­plet­ed,” he said.

In a coro­ner’s in­quest, a mag­is­trate is as­signed to con­sid­er the ev­i­dence sur­round­ing the death of a per­son and de­ter­mine if any­one should be held li­able. In­quests are used in most cas­es of ques­tion­able deaths in­clud­ing po­lice killings, prison deaths and in some cas­es where the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) finds that po­lice have in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to im­pli­cate a sus­pect.

Khan’s clients Cpl Clarke and PCs Pe­ters and Hare­wood are be­fore an in­quest in re­la­tion to the death of 21-year-old Mustapha “Tal­iban” Ed­wards in April 2008.

Ac­cord­ing to ini­tial po­lice re­ports, a group of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers were on joint pa­trol along Pump Trace, in Laven­tille, when they were al­leged­ly shot at by a group of men. They re­port­ed­ly re­turned fire and Ed­wards was shot sev­er­al times while the oth­er sus­pects es­caped.

Ed­wards’ death caused protest in his com­mu­ni­ty as friends and rel­a­tives claimed that he was ex­e­cut­ed by po­lice.