SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD & AM­BI­KA JA­GAS­SARS­INGH

The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy came to an abrupt halt on Thurs­day morn­ing when it was re­vealed that wit­ness­es wait­ing to tes­ti­fy were watch­ing their col­league give ev­i­dence live.

The rev­e­la­tion came while at­tor­ney for Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Gilbert Pe­ter­son SC, was cross-ex­am­in­ing LM­CS’s su­per­vi­sor Dex­ter Guer­ra.

Pe­ter­son abrupt­ly stopped his ques­tions to in­form the Com­mis­sion’s chair­man, King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, he had learnt that the three LM­CS em­ploy­ees who were wait­ing in a sep­a­rate room to give ev­i­dence were watch­ing the live stream of Guer­ra’s tes­ti­mo­ny.

On the first day of the En­quiry, Lynch told all the at­tor­neys present that no wit­ness was to look at the pro­ceed­ings be­fore giv­ing their ev­i­dence.

Af­ter he had been told his in­struc­tions were be­ing ig­nored, Lynch halt­ed the pro­ceed­ings.

When the Com­mis­sion re­sumed its sit­ting sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, Lynch was in­censed, be­rat­ing the wit­ness­es who had vi­o­lat­ed the or­der.

He said their cell phones had been tak­en away and all three were sep­a­rat­ed.

Lynch said he viewed their ac­tions as con­tempt and while he has sig­nif­i­cant au­thor­i­ty to sanc­tion them for that con­tempt as chair­man, he would not take ac­tion at this point, in­ti­mat­ing that a re­peat of such ac­tion would lead to con­se­quences.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned whether he was deal­ing with chil­dren as he said the in­tegri­ty of the En­quiry must be pre­served.