Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The tri­al of a law­suit from a long-stand­ing firearms deal­er, over a po­lice ex­er­cise in 2022 which re­sult­ed in his busi­ness be­ing closed for sev­er­al weeks, is set to be com­plet­ed this week.

The tri­al of the case, brought by Towfeek Ali and his com­pa­ny Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute Lim­it­ed, com­menced be­fore Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad in June and re­sumed this week.

In the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad is be­ing asked to de­ter­mine the na­ture of the ex­er­cise, which be­gan in ear­ly Oc­to­ber 2022.

While the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has con­tend­ed that the ex­er­cise was an in­spec­tion un­der Sec­tion 26 of the Firearms Act, Ali and his com­pa­ny have claimed that it was an im­per­mis­si­ble “au­dit” based on pur­port­ed state­ments made by the po­lice of­fi­cers who con­duct­ed it.

The leg­is­la­tion per­mits au­tho­rised po­lice of­fi­cers with­out a search war­rant to per­form ran­dom in­spec­tions of reg­is­ters com­piled by li­censed firearm deal­ers to en­sure ac­cu­rate record-keep­ing.

Tes­ti­fy­ing yes­ter­day was act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) Wayne Brown, who led the raid.

While fac­ing in­tense cross-ex­am­i­na­tion from British King’s Coun­sel Anand Be­har­ry­lal, Brown main­tained that the ex­er­cise was an in­spec­tion.

He claimed that Ali’s wife, at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, who is al­so a di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny, in­tro­duced the term “au­dit” when she ar­rived at the busi­ness to chal­lenge him and his col­leagues’ pres­ence there.

“When I ar­rived there I met with Mr Ali, who was calm and co­op­er­a­tive. I was con­cerned with Miss Al­fon­so. She was shout­ing and be­ing abra­sive,” Brown said.

He main­tained his po­si­tion even af­ter be­ing con­front­ed with a sta­tion di­ary ex­tract, in which the ex­er­cise was re­ferred to as “an au­dit”.

Sug­gest­ing that the en­try was made by one of his col­leagues, Brown said that the in­clu­sion of the term was pos­si­bly done in er­ror based on Al­fon­so’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Brown al­so claimed that he could not recog­nise hand­writ­ing on a le­gal brief pro­vid­ed to him and his col­leagues be­fore con­duct­ing the ex­er­cise, which al­so men­tioned an au­dit.

He claimed that it could have been done by a col­league, as he shared his copy, which was even­tu­al­ly at­tached to his af­fi­davit for the law­suit.

Brown was al­so quizzed over his de­ci­sion to re­quest the as­sis­tance of two ju­nior of­fi­cers.

While Brown claimed that they were need­ed to as­sist in in­spect­ing al­leged dis­crep­an­cies in hand­writ­ten en­tries made in Ali’s per­son­al Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL), Be­har­ry­lal point­ed out that the of­fi­cers claimed that they were in­struct­ed to as­sist in the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween firearm im­port per­mits and the com­pa­ny’s reg­is­ter.

He not­ed that one of the of­fi­cers claimed that the per­mits is­sued by the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, which Ali agreed to hand over, were not all that were con­tained in an of­fi­cial com­pi­la­tion in her pos­ses­sion.

Brown claimed that he was not aware of the com­pi­la­tion, as he al­leged that the doc­u­ments vol­un­tar­i­ly pro­vid­ed by Ali as­sist­ed in clar­i­fy­ing al­leged in­con­sis­ten­cies in the reg­is­ter.

He al­so main­tained that Ali and his com­pa­ny were re­quired to in­clude in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to im­port per­mits in their sales reg­is­ter, de­spite Be­har­ry­lal point­ing out that such was not re­quired un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

“I can’t say it had to be, but there was a space in the reg­is­ter for it to be in­clud­ed,” Brown said.

Brown al­so claimed that he struck a ver­bal agree­ment with Ali for him and his staff not to ac­cess the busi­ness un­til the ex­er­cise was com­plet­ed.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that he did not re­quest that Ali sign any note to re­flect such de­spite ask­ing him (Ali) to sign the per­mits he vol­un­teered.

Brown is ex­pect­ed to com­plete his tes­ti­mo­ny when the tri­al re­sumes at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain this morn­ing.

The con­tentious ex­er­cise, which oth­er firearms deal­ers were al­so sub­ject­ed to, be­gan on Oc­to­ber 8, 2022, and was com­plet­ed over two weeks lat­er.

Through the law­suit, Ali and the com­pa­ny are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the ex­er­cise. They are al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the loss­es they in­curred dur­ing the pe­ri­od that they could not op­er­ate.

Ali and his com­pa­ny are al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Asif Ho­sein-Shah. The TTPS was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC, Tama­ra Toolsie, Adi­ta Ram­du­lar, and Am­ri­ta Ram­sook.