Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Trini­bad artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Oliviere has threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and at­tor­ney Faris Al-Rawi, ac­cus­ing him of mak­ing “defam­a­to­ry and ma­li­cious­ly false” state­ments link­ing him to or­gan­ised crime and sug­gest­ing his re­lease from pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion re­sult­ed from an im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment.

In an 18-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 14, at­tor­neys at Quan­tum Le­gal de­mand­ed that Al-Rawi pub­licly re­tract the state­ments, is­sue an un­qual­i­fied apol­o­gy and pro­vide a writ­ten un­der­tak­ing that he will not re­peat the al­le­ga­tions un­less he can es­tab­lish a prop­er fac­tu­al ba­sis for them.

Al-Rawi has been giv­en un­til 3.30 pm on Fri­day (Sep­tem­ber 18) to re­spond. Fail­ing this, the at­tor­neys warned that le­gal pro­ceed­ings will be ini­ti­at­ed “with­out de­lay or fur­ther no­tice.”

The threat­ened law­suit stems from state­ments Al-Rawi al­leged­ly made dur­ing a Sep­tem­ber 11 news con­fer­ence while ques­tion­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der about the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime peace ini­tia­tive for east Port-of-Spain and the re­vo­ca­tion of Oliviere’s PDO.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, Al-Rawi re­ferred to an al­leged meet­ing or arrange­ment in­volv­ing in­di­vid­u­als known as “K-Man” and “Plumpy Boss,” ques­tioned whether Alexan­der had bro­kered a “deal” and con­nect­ed those claims to the re­vo­ca­tion of what he de­scribed as a “gang­ster’s PDO.”

The at­tor­neys con­tend that Al-Rawi’s state­ments linked Oliviere to a gang and al­le­ga­tions of ex­tor­tion, drug traf­fick­ing, shoot­ings and vi­o­lent in­tim­i­da­tion.

Quan­tum Le­gal ar­gues that, tak­en to­geth­er, the state­ments con­veyed the im­pres­sion that Oliviere was in­volved in se­ri­ous or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and that his re­lease from de­ten­tion had been se­cured through an im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment.

The let­ter ac­knowl­edges that a PDO was is­sued against Oliviere on March 19 un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.

That or­der stat­ed that con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence had iden­ti­fied him as a mem­ber of the Ras­ta City/Sev­en Gang, which au­thor­i­ties de­scribed as an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal group in­volved in ex­tor­tion, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, tar­get­ed shoot­ings and vi­o­lent in­tim­i­da­tion. It al­so al­leged that re­tal­ia­to­ry shoot­ings were be­ing planned.

How­ev­er, Oliviere’s at­tor­neys em­pha­sised these were al­le­ga­tions re­lied up­on by the ex­ec­u­tive to jus­ti­fy pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion and were not find­ings of guilt made by any court.

The le­gal team is re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on the find­ings of the Re­view Tri­bunal, which con­clud­ed there was “in­suf­fi­cient cause” for Oliviere’s de­ten­tion and that his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nei­ther nec­es­sary nor ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

The let­ter al­so not­ed that Alexan­der re­voked Oliviere’s de­ten­tion or­der on Au­gust 24. The re­vo­ca­tion was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished as Le­gal No­tice No. 677 on Au­gust 28.

Ac­cord­ing to the at­tor­neys, the re­vo­ca­tion no­tice mere­ly stat­ed that Alexan­der, act­ing un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, had re­voked the March 19 de­ten­tion or­der. It made no ref­er­ence to any po­lit­i­cal agree­ment or peace ini­tia­tive.

Quan­tum Le­gal there­fore ar­gues that while Al-Rawi was en­ti­tled to scru­ti­nise Alexan­der and ques­tion the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the peace ini­tia­tive, po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism did not en­ti­tle him to present un­proven al­le­ga­tions about Oliviere as es­tab­lished fact.

The at­tor­neys have chal­lenged Al-Rawi to dis­close any ev­i­dence sup­port­ing an al­leged link be­tween Oliviere, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and an im­prop­er arrange­ment sur­round­ing his re­lease.

Oliviere’s at­tor­neys said their client would pre­fer to re­solve the mat­ter with­out lit­i­ga­tion but main­tained that he views the al­leged dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion as se­ri­ous.