Fran­cis Joseph

Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, who is star­ing the prospect of los­ing all his prop­er­ties in set­tle­ment for the de­struc­tion of the Port-of-Spain Po­lice Head­quar­ters dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, is now sad­dled with a fur­ther $630,000 bill for his failed Privy Coun­cil ap­peal.

Al­though he lost the case be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil on May 5, 2009, it was on­ly last week that the State's Lon­don at­tor­ney, John Amei­da, went be­fore the Se­nior Costs Mas­ter O'Hare in Lon­don, and cer­ti­fied the costs as 63,321 pounds ster­ling. The bill has since been for­ward­ed to the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan. The ap­pli­ca­tion for costs has come one year af­ter five British Law Lords dis­missed Bakr's ap­peal that the af­fi­davit he had filed in his de­fence of the ap­pli­ca­tion by the State to seize his prop­er­ties, should be ad­mit­ted in­to ev­i­dence. The Law Lords dis­missed the ap­peal but ex­pressed reser­va­tions over its con­tents. In Sep­tem­ber 2009, Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine or­dered the State to put up 11 prop­er­ties for sale. Bakr nev­er ap­pealed and the last At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, made no at­tempt at sell­ing the prop­er­ties. Bakr con­tin­ues to en­joy his prop­er­ties.

Bakr had ap­pealed to the Law Lords seek­ing to re­in­state the af­fi­davit he had filed re­gard­ing an al­leged deal made with then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, to write off the debt as pay­ment for favours to Man­ning and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). This was in the run-up to the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion. But the Privy Coun­cil held that to be a pri­vate mat­ter that did not in­volve the State and was there­fore ir­rel­e­vant to the pro­ceed­ings. How­ev­er, the Privy Coun­cil says in its opin­ion the pri­vate arrange­ment be­tween Man­ning and Bakr was cor­rupt with­in the mean­ing...of Sec­tion 3 (of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act 1987) and "each par­ty to the agree­ment was act­ing in con­tra­ven­tion of the sec­tion." Jus­tice Nar­ine or­dered that the mat­ter be re­ferred to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. The Po­lice An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau be­gan in­quiries in March, but claims that Bakr is hold­ing up the in­ves­ti­ga­tion as he is yet to give a state­ment on the mat­ter.

?THE CASE?

The case against the Mus­limeen leader be­gan in 1994 when the State be­gan pro­ceed­ings against him and 113 mem­bers of the Ja­maat for burn­ing down Po­lice Head­quar­ters and dam­ag­ing the Red House dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup in Ju­ly 1990. On Sep­tem­ber 6, 1996, the State ob­tained judge­ment against Bakr and the Ja­maat and on Oc­to­ber 15, 2001 Jus­tice Joseph Tam as­sessed judge­ment in the sum of $15 mil­lion with in­ter­est. The oblig­a­tion climbed to $32 mil­lion in 2006. How­ev­er, when the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is­sued a sum­mons de­mand­ing the sale of 11 prop­er­ties in an ef­fort to sat­is­fy the judge­ment, Bakr swore to an af­fi­davit that he and Man­ning had met sev­er­al times and agreed that the State would not en­force the judg­ment to re­cov­er the mon­ey. Bakr claimed that there was a clear un­der­stand­ing with Man­ning that he, Bakr, would mo­bilise young peo­ple to vote for the PNM in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in 2002. Bakr said the meet­ings with the prime min­is­ter al­so agreed on the need for Bakr to as­sist in curb­ing the in­crease in crime in cer­tain ar­eas.

Bakr claimed he pre­sent­ed Man­ning with a list of what the Ja­maat want­ed in ex­change for as­sist­ing the gov­ern­ing par­ty and the gov­ern­ment. The de­mands in­clud­ed as­sur­ances that there would be no at­tempt to en­force pay­ment of the judg­ment debt. The Mus­limeen leader claimed that Man­ning called the judg­ment a "pa­per judg­ment" which would nev­er be en­forced. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al moved to strike down Bakr's af­fi­davit but on De­cem­ber 8, 2006, Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion, fol­low­ing which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ap­pealed. On Jan­u­ary 15, 2007, the Court of Ap­peal threw out Bakr's af­fi­davit. Bakr then ap­pealed to the Privy Coun­cil. "It is on this ground of ir­rel­e­vance, rather than that of any in­con­ve­nience or em­bar­rass­ment to the Prime Min­is­ter, that the Board con­sid­er that the de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal should be af­firmed," the Privy Coun­cil stat­ed. In the judge­ment, one Law Lord says: "It is im­por­tant to note that the case con­cerns a pri­vate law ac­tion brought by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on be­half of the State of Trinidad and To­ba­go against the Ja­maat for dam­ages.

"If the Prime Min­is­ter made an agree­ment on the lines al­leged in the af­fi­davit, it could not have been made on be­half of the State." Lord Car­swell, one of the Law Lords, holds that the agree­ment re­ferred to in the af­fi­davit was, on its terms, de­signed to ad­vance the elec­toral prospects of the Prime Min­is­ter's po­lit­i­cal par­ty and was not bind­ing on the State. "The essence of the agree­ment be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Mr Abu Bakr on be­half of the Ja­maat was that cer­tain ad­van­tages would be giv­en to the Ja­maat out of State prop­er­ty, in re­turn for se­cur­ing vot­ing sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter's po­lit­i­cal par­ty," Car­swell said. The Court of Ap­peal held that the agree­ment was il­le­gal at com­mon law. Car­swell holds that the agree­ment was il­le­gal from its in­cep­tion.