Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­spite her of­fice be­ing fire­bombed on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, at­tor­ney Saira Lakhan, Pres­i­dent of the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL), has vowed not to be in­tim­i­dat­ed, ex­press­ing full con­fi­dence that the per­pe­tra­tors will be brought to jus­tice.

Lakhan, a lawyer with 15 years of prac­tice and a se­nior or­di­nary mem­ber at­tached to the Coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, leads an all-fe­male law firm of four at­tor­neys at Lewis Street in San Fer­nan­do.

The first in­ci­dent oc­curred when a Molo­tov cock­tail was thrown at the front door of Lakhan’s of­fice on Sep­tem­ber 25 and ig­nit­ed for two hours. For­tu­nate­ly, the flames did not spread, and the build­ing was not dam­aged.

A sec­ond at­tack oc­curred yes­ter­day morn­ing, and a re­view of CCTV footage re­vealed that around 3.30 am, the per­pe­tra­tor climbed the fence with two Molo­tov cock­tails. One was placed di­rect­ly in front of the door, which caused sub­stan­tial dam­age, and an­oth­er was placed on top of the elec­tri­cal pan­el out­side the build­ing.

She said there were no ver­bal threats be­fore ei­ther in­ci­dent.

While Lakhan be­lieves she has no con­tentious mat­ters in court that could mo­ti­vate these at­tacks, she con­firmed that her team has pro­vid­ed the po­lice with cer­tain leads on pos­si­ble sus­pects.

Ad­mit­ting that she was fear­ful be­cause she felt as though she was be­ing “watched”, Lakhan said she would not al­low fear to pre­vent her from do­ing her job.

“If such a mes­sage was sent to me via in­tim­i­da­tion, I am not afraid. I will con­tin­ue to do what I have to do through my job as an at­tor­ney at law, and I will re­ly on the court sys­tem and our present sys­tem in place to do the need­ful to pro­vide jus­tice,” she said.

While the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the prop­er­ty was not com­pro­mised, her col­league and friend, at­tor­ney-at-law Prakash Ra­mad­har, said the at­tacks seem to be es­ca­lat­ing. Not­ing that the per­pe­tra­tor in­tend­ed to burn this build­ing to the ground, Ra­mad­har, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, said, “We live in a so­ci­ety where peo­ple are afraid, much afraid, and if they be­lieve that they can in­tim­i­date oth­ers to with­draw or to not pur­sue claims, then the en­tire rule of law can fall.”

Not­ing that the at­tack oc­curred just one day af­ter pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty sta­tioned at the premis­es was re­moved, he said it sug­gests that the prop­er­ty is be­ing mon­i­tored.

ASL Vice Pres­i­dent Gob­in Har­ryper­sad was con­fi­dent that the per­pe­tra­tor(s) would be ar­rest­ed. To those who may have been in­volved but were not present at the scene, he warned that they could be held cul­pa­ble for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit ar­son or, through the joint en­ter­prise prin­ci­ple, charged with ar­son.

“If per­sons hold the view that they can em­ploy per­sons to do my dirty work, I am sim­ply telling them, sir or ma’am, think again.” He al­so ap­plaud­ed the po­lice for their swift re­sponse.

San Fer­nan­do po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.