An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali, who is cur­rent­ly de­tained at the Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, un­der State of Emer­gency (SoE) or­ders, have ac­cused prison and po­lice of­fi­cials of “set­ting the stage” so they can legal­ly ex­e­cute him un­der the guise of an at­tempt­ed get­away.

De­mand­ing to meet with Ali last evening fol­low­ing so­cial me­dia claims that his client had es­caped from the mil­i­tary base, at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­wan said they had “iden­ti­fied a pat­tern of mis­in­for­ma­tion and false nar­ra­tive be­ing ad­vanced by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in an ap­par­ent at­tempt to jus­ti­fy the al­le­ga­tions.”

Ramkhal­wan, who is in­struct­ed by An­war Ho­sein, said the al­le­ga­tions were that Ali, along with oth­ers, is in­volved in a plot to desta­bilise the coun­try by tar­get­ing mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion’s Of­fice; that Ali was trans­ferred to Tetetron Bar­racks as a re­sponse to the al­leged na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat; that drones were lo­cat­ed fly­ing over Tetetron Bar­racks; and that Ali had es­caped from his prison cell at the se­cure fa­cil­i­ty.

In a let­ter to act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe around 6 pm yes­ter­day, Ramkhal­wan said, “It is our con­sid­ered po­si­tion that the nar­ra­tive cur­rent­ly be­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed by the au­thor­i­ties con­sti­tutes a de­lib­er­ate con­struct, de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­tra­ju­di­cial ex­e­cu­tion of the in­tend­ed ap­pli­cant (Ali) at the di­rec­tion of the State.”

He added, “This nar­ra­tive al­so ap­pears in­tend­ed to pro­vide jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ex­treme mea­sures re­cent­ly adopt­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the con­tem­plat­ed or de­clared State of Emer­gency.”

In the cir­cum­stances, Ali’s le­gal team re­quest­ed ur­gent con­fir­ma­tion of the dates and times the drones were iden­ti­fied by the T&T Prison Ser­vice, T&T De­fence Force or T&T Po­lice Ser­vice; pic­tures of the drone/s men­tioned; whether there has, in fact, been any at­tempt by Ali to es­cape cus­tody; and if Ali re­mained in the cus­tody and con­trol of the State.

Ramkhal­wan said last evening’s re­quest to meet with Ali was in­tend­ed to re­as­sure his le­gal team, as well as Ali’s rel­a­tives, that he had not been killed by of­fi­cials; and was part of the wider ef­fort to safe­guard Ali’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and to give in­struc­tions con­cern­ing the se­ri­ous pub­lic al­le­ga­tions be­ing made against him.