At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says he in­tends to con­tin­ue to re­view com­plaints about the con­duct of at­tor­neys in­volved in prison lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters for his of­fice, and will ad­dress any con­cerns aris­ing out of mat­ters that have been com­plet­ed and are no longer be­fore the court.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day af­ter the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion an­nounced it would not meet with the AG to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

In a re­lease last evening, Ram­lo­gan said he had no in­ten­tion of step­ping aside from the lat­est probe or­dered by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, adding the POA was not part of the com­mit­tee formed to in­ves­ti­gate, among oth­er things, al­le­ga­tions made by the as­so­ci­a­tion.

"Hav­ing re­gard to the con­cerns raised by the as­so­ci­a­tion, I did in fact no­ti­fy its gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Mr Ger­ard Gor­don, of the meet­ing to af­ford them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in this process and sub­mit their con­cerns to the com­mit­tee," the AG said.

Ad­dress­ing a con­cern the POA had about com­ments the AG made about pris­ons of­fi­cers, he said, "I wish to clar­i­fy that the state­ments 'which ap­peared to con­vey very neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions about prison of­fi­cers' were in fact based on the find­ings and state­ments made by the High Court in var­i­ous judge­ments de­liv­ered against prison of­fi­cers in which Judges con­demned their con­duct."Ram­lo­gan said the tri­al in the case of Ja­mal Sam­bury vers­es the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was present­ly pend­ing be­fore the High Court.

These pro­ceed­ings are there­fore sub ju­dice, Ram­lo­gan said. He added that the as­sess­ment was sched­uled to be heard on the May 21 be­fore Mas­ter So­bian-Awai."I did in fact seek a re­port on this mat­ter and the con­cerns raised in the pub­lic do­main from the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al (act­ing) to de­ter­mine what ac­tion if any, should be tak­en.

"I was ad­vised that it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for any­one to con­sid­er this mat­ter or mat­ters aris­ing there­from while the case is pend­ing be­fore the court. I ac­cept­ed this ad­vice, as it would in­deed be im­prop­er and prej­u­di­cial for any en­quiry or ac­tion to be tak­en that would pre-empt the find­ings of the court.

"The State is the De­fen­dant in this mat­ter and it would be un­eth­i­cal and in breach of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act for the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take any ac­tion on any case which is still be­fore the courts. To do so would vi­o­late the Rule of Law and prej­u­dice the rights of the par­ties be­fore the court."

Say­ing that an any event an in­de­pen­dent en­quiry was al­ready on the way, the AG said So­bian-Awai has re­ferred the Sam­bury mat­ter to the Reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court who, in turn, re­ferred the at­tor­neys in­volved and the case to the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

The dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee is the statu­to­ry body vest­ed with the pow­ers to in­ves­ti­gate and deal with mat­ters of this kind un­der the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act. The High Court al­so re­mains vest­ed with the in­her­ent ju­ris­dic­tion to pro­tect its process and make such or­ders to pro­tect same, Ram­lo­gan said.

"It would be im­prop­er for the Gov­ern­ment, as the ex­ec­u­tive arm of the State, to tres­pass up­on the role and func­tion of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and the High Court, as to do so would amount to a usurpa­tion of their le­gal func­tions, un­der­mine their au­thor­i­ty and breach the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. In­deed, it would un­der­mine the rule of law," he said.