The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will be re­quired to de­fend yet an­oth­er case brought by re­put­ed gang leader Ra­jaee Ali over be­ing trans­ferred to mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas and be­ing de­nied ac­cess to his le­gal team.

Ali’s lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, ini­ti­at­ed fresh le­gal pro­ceed­ings on his be­half on Fri­day.

The move came al­most a week af­ter Ali, who is await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal, filed a habeas cor­pus law­suit over his trans­fer from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca to the T&T Reg­i­ment’s Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas as a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo based on the ad­vice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

Dur­ing an emer­gency hear­ing last Fri­day, Ali’s claims over al­leged breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were sound­ly re­ject­ed by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad.

At the time, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that the rights of one man could not trump the rights of the na­tion as a whole, es­pe­cial­ly less than 24 hours af­ter the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure took ef­fect.

Ali’s lawyers then threat­ened a con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit over be­ing de­nied ac­cess to him.

The law­suit was not filed as Ali’s le­gal team was giv­en as­sur­ances that vir­tu­al and in-per­son meet­ings would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed last week.

In the most re­cent court fil­ings, Ramkhal­whan stat­ed that the meet­ing did not tran­spire and was not resched­uled as promised.

Chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of Ali’s ini­tial trans­fer along­side sev­er­al high-pro­file in­mates, Ramkhal­whan not­ed that when the SoE was pro­claimed, the Teteron Bar­racks and the T&T Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas were de­clared dis­trict pris­ons un­der the Pris­ons Act.

He re­ferred to Sec­tion 5 of the leg­is­la­tion, which pre­scribes such des­ig­na­tions and states that on­ly per­sons who were sen­tenced to a prison term of a month or less, af­ter sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, can be held at such fa­cil­i­ties.

He al­so not­ed that the fa­cil­i­ty can be used un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions for the SoE to house de­tainees.

“The In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant has not been is­sued any de­ten­tion or­ders,” he said.

Ramkhal­whan al­so con­tend­ed that prison rules deal­ing with the pro­ce­dure to fol­low when trans­fer­ring pris­on­ers be­tween prison fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion, were not com­plied with.

“The In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant sub­mits that the Ho­n­ourable Court when re­view­ing the trans­fer de­ci­sion, must look at the con­di­tions the In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant was placed in to de­ter­mine whether the said de­ci­sion is un­law­ful, un­rea­son­able, and ir­ra­tional,” Ramkhal­whan said.

Stat­ing that pris­on­er trans­fers must be done in ac­cor­dance with the rules, Ramkhal­whan said: “Nei­ther the prison ser­vice nor the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice is at lib­er­ty to trans­fer pris­on­ers for an ul­te­ri­or ob­ject no mat­ter how de­sir­able that ob­ject may seem to be in the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Ramkhal­whan sug­gest­ed that the trans­fer was im­prop­er as it ef­fec­tive­ly sought to pun­ish his client.

Through the law­suit, Ali is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against his trans­fer and an or­der com­pelling its re­ver­sal.

The case is sched­uled to come up for a hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son to­day, Mon­day.

Ali is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by An­war Ho­sein.