Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and at­tor­ney Faris Al-Rawi says he has not re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion from at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Trini­bad artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Oliviere.

Al-Rawi was ques­tioned about the mat­ter out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, a day af­ter Oliviere’s at­tor­neys sent an 18-page let­ter ac­cus­ing him of mak­ing “defam­a­to­ry and ma­li­cious­ly false” state­ments link­ing the artiste to or­gan­ised crime and sug­gest­ing his re­lease from pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion re­sult­ed from an im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment.

“I haven’t re­ceived any­thing,” Al-Rawi said.

Asked whether he would look in­to the mat­ter now that it had been brought to his at­ten­tion, Al-Rawi ques­tioned why he would do so with­out hav­ing re­ceived the let­ter.

“I haven’t re­ceived any lit­i­ga­tion or threat of lit­i­ga­tion,” he said.

Al-Rawi al­so chal­lenged the time­frame cit­ed by Oliviere’s at­tor­neys, who have giv­en him un­til 3.30 pm on Fri­day to re­spond be­fore le­gal pro­ceed­ings are ini­ti­at­ed.

“To­day is the 15th. The pre-ac­tion pro­to­cols, if this is an al­leged defama­tion mat­ter, re­quire 28 days at min­i­mum and longer. Let’s not for­get that there’s some­thing called wast­ed costs,” he said.

Al-Rawi said that if he re­ceives the let­ter, he will as­sess its mer­its.

“Any­body at­tempt­ing to do some­thing, when you re­ceive some­thing, you take a look at it, you look at the mer­its,” he said.

“You’ve not­ed my man­ner, whether it is for clients or for my­self, I keep my­self very close to the law, so we’ll deal with it. Let’s see. I cer­tain­ly haven’t re­ceived any­thing.”

The threat­ened le­gal ac­tion re­lates to com­ments Al-Rawi al­leged­ly made at an Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 11 while ques­tion­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der about the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime peace ini­tia­tive for east Port-of-Spain and the re­vo­ca­tion of Oliviere’s Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

Ac­cord­ing to the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, Al-Rawi re­ferred to an al­leged meet­ing or arrange­ment in­volv­ing in­di­vid­u­als known as “K-Man” and “Plumpy Boss”, ques­tioned whether Alexan­der had bro­kered a “deal” and con­nect­ed those claims to the re­vo­ca­tion of what he de­scribed as a “gang­ster’s PDO”.

Oliviere’s at­tor­neys con­tend that the com­ments linked their client to se­ri­ous or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions of ex­tor­tion, drug traf­fick­ing, shoot­ings and vi­o­lent in­tim­i­da­tion, and sug­gest­ed his re­lease re­sult­ed from an im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment.

How­ev­er, the at­tor­neys em­pha­sised that these were al­le­ga­tions re­lied up­on by the ex­ec­u­tive to jus­ti­fy pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion and were not find­ings of guilt made by any court.

The le­gal team is re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on the find­ings of the Re­view Tri­bunal, which con­clud­ed there was “in­suf­fi­cient cause” for Oliviere’s de­ten­tion and that his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nei­ther nec­es­sary nor ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Oliviere was de­tained un­der a PDO is­sued on March 19 un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. The or­der stat­ed that con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence had iden­ti­fied him as a mem­ber of the Ras­ta City/Sev­en Gang, which au­thor­i­ties de­scribed as an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal group in­volved in ex­tor­tion, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, tar­get­ed shoot­ings and vi­o­lent in­tim­i­da­tion. It al­so al­leged that re­tal­ia­to­ry shoot­ings were be­ing planned.

Alexan­der re­voked Oliviere’s de­ten­tion or­der on Au­gust 24. The re­vo­ca­tion was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished as Le­gal No­tice No 677 on Au­gust 28. - Ke­jan Haynes