Derek Achong

Al­most eight years af­ter Xtra Foods chief ex­ec­u­tive Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man was ab­duct­ed from her Ch­agua­nas home and sub­se­quent­ly killed, the tri­al of a dozen men ac­cused of her mur­der be­gan in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day.The tri­al start­ed with the State's open­ing ad­dress to the ju­ry, which in­clud­ed the har­row­ing tale of Naipaul-Cool­man's last days, nar­rat­ed by spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Is­rael Khan, SC.The ju­ry, the dozen ac­cused men and their two dozen at­tor­neys all lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly to the nar­ra­tive, de­spite the gris­ly de­scrip­tions, com­plex sto­ry­line and sev­er­al re­li­gious and cul­tur­al ref­er­ences which Khan wove to­geth­er in his four-hour pre­sen­ta­tion.

Khan en­cour­aged ju­rors to be ob­jec­tive and dis­pas­sion­ate when lis­ten­ing to the ev­i­dence and told them to di­vorce their per­son­al opin­ions from their de­lib­er­a­tions."Give these men a fair tri­al but don't have any sym­pa­thy for them or the vic­tim," Khan said.He ex­plained to ju­rors that dur­ing the tri­al, the State, in its bid to prove the guilt of the 12 men, would lead a mix­ture of sci­en­tif­ic and cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence, cou­pled with tes­ti­mo­ny from one of the ac­cused men's neigh­bours, who was al­leged­ly present when Naipaul-Cool­man was killed and her body dis­posed of.

"When you put to­geth­er every­thing like a jig­saw puz­zle you would get a clear pic­ture of the sto­ry of this woman's death," Khan said.How­ev­er, he was care­ful to note that the State did not have the ev­i­dence to link the men to Naipaul-Cool­man's kid­nap­ping on De­cem­ber 19, 2006 but in­stead could on­ly prove that they were aware of it and par­tic­i­pat­ed in her mur­der and the dis­pos­al of her body."If, af­ter hear­ing the ev­i­dence, you have a rea­son­able doubt, set them free. If in your heart and con­science you know they are guilty, find them guilty," he said.

Khan re­vealed that of the 74 state wit­ness­es ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy in the tri­al, 65 were po­lice of­fi­cers and the rest mem­bers of Naipaul-Cool­man's fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing her hus­band, Ren­nie Cool­man, and her daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, Risha Ali.The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to last well over a year, as de­fence at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing each man are ex­pect­ed to cross-ex­am­ine sev­er­al im­por­tant wit­ness­es in­di­vid­u­al­ly.

Tight se­cu­ri­ty

Se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, were in­creased yes­ter­day as the mur­der tri­al start­ed.Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers set up a sec­ondary check­point out­side the en­trance to the Sec­ond and Third As­sizes hours be­fore the mat­ter start­ed. Vis­i­tors were told to leave their cell­phones with se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel be­fore they were al­lowed in­to the two court­rooms.The two rooms, out­fit­ted with video con­fer­enc­ing equip­ment, are be­ing used for the tri­al to ac­com­mo­date the large num­ber of at­tor­neys who are de­fend­ing the 12 ac­cused. The tri­al has been blight­ed with de­lays in the past as many of the ac­cused had dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­fore the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty in­ter­vened in 2012 to im­ple­ment a spe­cial Cab­i­net-ap­proved pay­ment plan to con­vince de­fence at­tor­neys to rep­re­sent the ac­cused in the tri­al.

Ju­ry se­lec­tion be­gan in May last year when more than 600 peo­ple were sum­moned as po­ten­tial ju­rors. The tri­al could not be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the month-long ju­ry se­lec­tion process, how­ev­er, as de­fence at­tor­neys were en­gaged in pre-tri­al le­gal ar­gu­ments.Be­fore ad­journ­ing the case, Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip warned ju­rors not to dis­cuss the tri­al with their friends, fam­i­ly and mem­bers of the pub­lic.State pros­e­cu­tors will be­gin pre­sent­ing ev­i­dence in the case to­mor­row.