At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has apol­o­gised to firearms deal­er Brent Thomas for his or­deal af­ter his con­tro­ver­sial ar­rest and re­turn to T&T from Bar­ba­dos in Oc­to­ber 2022.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al dis­con­tin­ued the State’s ap­peal against the High Court’s de­ci­sion in Thomas’s le­gal mat­ter, paving the way for ne­go­ti­a­tions for a set­tle­ment that will like­ly be in the mil­lions.

The amount is yet to be de­ter­mined and will come fol­low­ing an as­sess­ment of com­pen­sa­tion.

Je­re­mie wrote to Thomas’s at­tor­neys, led by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, on Tues­day, say­ing he in­formed the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al to write to the Court of Ap­peal about his de­ci­sion.

“It is the State’s in­ten­tion to en­ter in­to good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with Mr Thomas and Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre Lim­it­ed re­gard­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al dam­ages and costs both in the High Court and Court of Ap­peal, in recog­ni­tion of the vi­o­la­tions found by the High Court.

“On be­half of the State, I apol­o­gise for the or­deal that Mr Thomas has en­dured and any rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age caused by these pro­ceed­ings, which the High Court has now de­fin­i­tive­ly found to con­sti­tute an abuse of process,” the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al wrote.

Thomas was ar­rest­ed by heav­i­ly armed Bar­ba­di­an Po­lice in his ho­tel room in Bar­ba­dos on Oc­to­ber 5, 2022.

He was de­tained be­fore be­ing tak­en to the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, where he was hand­ed over to two Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers.

He was then brought to Trinidad on an air­craft linked to the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices.

Thomas faced sev­en firearm-re­lat­ed charges, in­clud­ing al­leged pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal firearms and ex­plo­sives.

He de­nied the charges, say­ing he had per­mits from the com­mis­sion­er.

His at­tor­ney Ho­sein ar­gued that his client should not have been pros­e­cut­ed for the le­gal loop­hole that was used by five po­lice com­mis­sion­ers to get him to sup­ply weapons and am­mu­ni­tion to lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies for al­most two decades.

Ho­sein claimed that the ri­fles and grenades, which he claimed were all list­ed on the FULs held by Thomas and his busi­ness, were kept for demon­stra­tion pur­pos­es.

Two months be­fore his Bar­ba­dos ar­rest, TTPS of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants in Trinidad, ar­rest­ing Thomas.

He was re­leased sev­er­al days lat­er af­ter a High Court rul­ing.

In No­vem­ber 2022, Thomas sued the State, chal­leng­ing his de­ten­tion and the war­rants ex­e­cut­ed at his home and deal­er­ship.

In April 2023, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad stayed all the crim­i­nal charges, rul­ing that the war­rants were un­law­ful­ly ob­tained.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad found that the TTPS’ ac­tions stripped away Thomas’s dig­ni­ty and were in­tend­ed to hu­mil­i­ate him.

“These in­ci­dents took place short­ly af­ter the Stan­ley John re­port came out, as men­tioned by ASP Birch in re­la­tion to the grant­i­ng of firearms li­cences by the for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, and it was clear­ly in the pub­lic do­main with re­spect to some sort of im­pro­pri­ety em­a­nat­ing from that tenure.

While the State ap­pealed Ram­per­sad’s de­ci­sion in 2023, in Ju­ly 2024 it had con­ced­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers act­ed il­le­gal­ly in their con­tro­ver­sial ar­rest of Thomas in Bar­ba­dos and his sub­se­quent re­turn to this coun­try in Oc­to­ber 2022.

The Bar­ba­dos Gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for the role of its of­fi­cials in­volved in Thomas’ ar­rest.

In Ju­ly 2024, High Court Judge Maris­sa Robert­son ruled that the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit act­ed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly when its act­ing di­rec­tor, Nigel Stod­dard, made re­quests in re­la­tion to Thomas, with­out first re­ceiv­ing a sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tion re­port (STR) or a sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty re­port (SAR) from a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. 

‘I can re­build my life’

Yes­ter­day, Thomas called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Dr Kei­th Row­ley and how due process could so “eas­i­ly be swept away.” He al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude to God.

“To­day, by the Grace of God, I can at­tempt to re­build my life with my fam­i­ly and per­haps be of ser­vice again to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and as an Olympic Coach. By the is­sue of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I have been cleared of all the false charges against me.

“The ad­mis­sion of guilt on the Row­ley gov­ern­ment’s part, in my opin­ion, should be du­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed to un­der­stand more of who, how, and why the loss of in­di­vid­ual rights could be so eas­i­ly swept away with due process. Hav­ing re­flect­ed on my sit­u­a­tion since and over these chal­leng­ing years of so much per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al loss, the ex­tra ju­di­cial forces in our coun­try should con­cern us all.”