A High Court Judge has dis­missed a law­suit against the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty brought by one of the main wit­ness­es in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed tri­al of six po­lice of­fi­cers, who were ac­cused of mur­der­ing three friends from Moru­ga in 2011.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad took the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day as WPC Nicole Clement’s case came up for hear­ing be­fore him.

Clement was ini­tial­ly charged along­side Sgt Khem­raj Sa­hadeo and PCs Re­nal­do Re­viero, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Ju­man, An­to­nio Ra­madin with mur­der­ing Abi­gail John­son, Ker­ron Ec­cles, and Alana Dun­can.

The ve­hi­cle the friends were trav­el­ling in was shot at by the of­fi­cers at the cor­ner of Rochard Dou­glas Road and Gun­ness Trace in Bar­rack­pore on Ju­ly 22, 2011.

The of­fi­cers claimed that the trio shot at them and they re­turned fire in self-de­fence.

Clement even­tu­al­ly en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) un­der which the mur­der charges were dropped and she was in­stead charged with con­spir­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice in ex­change for her tes­ti­mo­ny against her for­mer col­leagues. Her sen­tenc­ing for the less­er charge was de­ferred pend­ing the even­tu­al out­come of the tri­al.

Clement tes­ti­fied dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of the case and claimed that they were tar­get­ing Dun­can’s com­mon-law hus­band Shum­ba James, who was known to have used the ve­hi­cle they were dri­ving in and was al­leged­ly want­ed for a se­ries of mur­ders.

She claimed that Ec­cles and Dun­can sur­vived the ini­tial vol­ley of gun­shots and were tak­en to a re­mote lo­ca­tion off the M2 Ring Road in Wood­land where they were al­leged­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

How­ev­er, when she was sum­moned to tes­ti­fy be­fore High Court Judge Car­la Brown-An­toine al­most two weeks ago, she re­fused to par­tic­i­pate due to “safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty” con­cerns.

Her tes­ti­mo­ny dur­ing the in­quiry was in­stead read to the ju­ry.

Last Fri­day, the ju­ry re­turned with not guilty ver­dicts for all six of­fi­cers af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing for less than an hour.

In her law­suit against the min­istry, Clement was claim­ing that while she was in the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme await­ing the tri­al, the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail at the safe house she was be­ing held in was re­moved in No­vem­ber, last year.

Clement claimed that no ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en to her and the de­ci­sion was con­trary to the min­istry’s le­gal oblig­a­tions.

Al­though Clement at­tend­ed pre­vi­ous hear­ings of the case, she was not in at­ten­dance dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al hear­ing.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stood down the case to give the min­istry an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tact Clement but de­cid­ed to de­ter­mine it af­ter they were un­able to make con­tact.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that her case be­came aca­d­e­m­ic af­ter the tri­al was com­plet­ed.

“It is not go­ing to in­volve a pro­por­tion­ate use of the court’s time for some­thing that is pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic... There is no util­i­ty to be served in keep­ing this mat­ter on the court’s list,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who led the min­istry’s le­gal team, agreed with the de­ci­sion.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that arrange­ments could be made for Clement to col­lect per­son­al items, which she claimed she left in the safe house, be­fore leav­ing the pro­gramme.

De­spite the out­come, Mendes did not de­mand that Clement pay le­gal costs for the failed case.

Clement still has a pend­ing case against the DPP’s Of­fice over its al­leged fail­ure to con­tin­ue plea dis­cus­sions with her in re­la­tion to fi­nan­cial sup­port af­ter the tri­al.

The min­istry was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Chase Pe­gus and Lianne Thomas.