Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal is sched­uled to hear an ap­peal from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), over a mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion to free ac­cused gang leader Ra­jaee Ali of a charge of dri­ving a car with­out a valid cer­tifi­cate of in­sur­ance in 2014, lat­er this month. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Maria Wil­son re­served No­vem­ber 28 to hear the ap­peal dur­ing a sta­tus hear­ing yes­ter­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ali was ar­rest­ed and charged af­ter he was stopped by po­lice while dri­ving in Cara­po on No­vem­ber 3, 2014. 

Ali al­leged­ly pre­sent­ed an in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cate for the ve­hi­cle which ex­pired the month be­fore. 
The fol­low­ing day, the own­er of the ve­hi­cle vis­it­ed the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion, where Ali was be­ing de­tained, and pre­sent­ed an in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cate which com­menced that day. 

In May 2019, Mag­is­trate Avion Gill found Ali not guilty of the of­fence. 

Pre­sent­ing pre­lim­i­nary sub­mis­sions dur­ing the hear­ing yes­ter­day, Ali’s lawyer Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj claimed Mag­is­trate Gill’s de­ci­sion could not be fault­ed, as the po­lice of­fi­cer who ar­rest­ed his client should have done a more thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion based on his sus­pi­cions over the va­lid­i­ty of the in­sur­ance. 

Deputy DPP George Bus­by dis­agreed, as he point­ed to Sec­tion 40 of the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act, which gives dri­vers the bur­den to prove the va­lid­i­ty of the in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cates for ve­hi­cles they are dri­ving. 

He al­so claimed the mag­is­trate erred by fail­ing to ad­mit and prop­er­ly con­sid­er the in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cate that was pre­sent­ed by the own­er of the ve­hi­cle af­ter Ali’s ar­rest. 

In Sep­tem­ber, two oth­er Court of Ap­peal Judges re­served their de­ci­sion in a sep­a­rate ap­peal over the de­ci­sion of an­oth­er mag­is­trate to con­vict Ali of hav­ing an il­le­gal elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tion and sen­tence him to three months in prison in May 2018. 

In that case, Ali is claim­ing his con­vic­tion was un­safe, as the mag­is­trate al­lowed the tri­al to con­tin­ue in his lawyer’s ab­sence. He is al­so con­tend­ing the sen­tence was harsh and ex­ces­sive, as the max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is a $20,000 fine or five years in prison. 

The DPP’s Of­fice al­so has a pend­ing ap­peal over Ali be­ing freed of pos­sess­ing the car­cass of a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal dur­ing a mora­to­ri­um on hunt­ing in 2014. 

How­ev­er, the out­comes of the ap­peals will be ar­guably in­con­se­quen­tial for Ali, who is on re­mand along with nine mem­bers of his al­leged gang for mur­der­ing Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal in May 2014. 

The mem­bers of the group are al­so fac­ing gang charges which were ini­tial­ly dis­missed but sub­se­quent­ly re­in­stat­ed by the Court of Ap­peal. 

Ali and four oth­ers have al­so been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for con­spir­ing to mur­der SLAM 100.5 an­nounc­er Ke­vaughn “Lur­bz” Sa­vory in late 2014.