Richard Lord

Four at­tor­neys and two for­mer judges have been cho­sen by Gov­ern­ment to pros­e­cute peo­ple charged dur­ing the state of emer­gency in T&T. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan an­nounced the names of the team dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. They are pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Dana See­ta­hal SC, Pamela El­der SC, Theodore Guer­ra SC and Is­rael Khan SC.

Ram­lo­gan said the team would be as­sist­ed by for­mer High Court judges Sophia Chote and Lar­ry Lal­la.

Ram­lo­gan said the "care­ful­ly se­lect­ed team will as­sist and fa­cil­i­tate the Po­lice Ser­vice with the case man­age­ment and prepa­ra­tion, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the avalanche of cas­es which will come out of the state of emer­gency, giv­en the num­ber of ar­rests that have made and the num­ber of charges that are like­ly to be laid."

Ram­lo­gan said the team was es­tab­lished to:

• Al­lay fears about any un­war­rant­ed abuse of hu­man rights:

• en­sure that the po­lice have com­pe­tent le­gal ad­vice at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty; and

• en­sure that the case was prop­er­ly pre­pared with a view to se­cur­ing con­vic­tion in a court of law, based on ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence, con­sis­tent with the rule of law.

Ram­lo­gan said he met with the team mem­bers on Wednes­day, along with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard. The AG said the DPP's con­sti­tu­tion­al role "in all of this is re­spect­ed and care­ful­ly de­mar­cat­ed." He said the mat­ters were now in the hands of the lawyers con­cerned and the DPP, who would work hand-in-hand with the po­lice. "They have been se­lect­ed as well to strike the right bal­ance to en­sure that those who are in­no­cent will be treat­ed fair­ly and be re­leased ear­ly," the AG added.

He said the team al­so would work to en­sure crim­i­nals were con­vict­ed where there was com­pelling ev­i­dence against them. Ram­lo­gan al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices and De­fence Force for the dis­cov­ery of sev­er­al high-pow­ered guns in north­east Trinidad yes­ter­day. He al­so thanked cit­i­zens who had been send­ing him in­for­ma­tion, via Face­book. He said the in­for­ma­tion was be­ing sent to the po­lice and De­fence Force with­out the iden­ti­ty of the senders and the in­for­ma­tion had been as­sist­ing in the fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in T&T.