?Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Mar­tin Daly, SC, and Dou­glas Mendes, SC, have sort­ed out their dis­pute over the use of a let­ter sent by Mendes on the is­sue of the con­tro­ver­sial af­fi­davit of Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr. Yes­ter­day, both Daly and Mendes signed a joint state­ment which was sent to the me­dia. It stat­ed: "We wish to in­di­cate that we met and ex­plained to each oth­er ful­ly our re­spec­tive po­si­tions on the dis­clo­sure by the Coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of cor­re­spon­dence be­tween us. "We con­tin­ue to re­gard each oth­er with trust and re­spect and have agreed to treat the dis­clo­sure of the cor­re­spon­dence as a gen­uine mis­un­der­stand­ing and made in good faith. We re­gard the is­sue as at an end." Last week, Mendes was up­set with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and its pres­i­dent for pub­lish­ing a "pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial" let­ter which he sent to the as­so­ci­a­tion con­cern­ing Bakr's af­fi­davit.

In a let­ter, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 15, Mendes said: "I can on­ly con­clude that you and your coun­cil set about pub­lish­ing my views with­out my per­mis­sion, reck­less, if not in­tend­ing, that I would be em­bar­rassed both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly." Mendes' let­ter was in re­sponse to one sent the day be­fore by Daly to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, in which Daly quot­ed from a doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Mendes. The whole is­sue stemmed from Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine send­ing Bakr's af­fi­davit to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for in­ves­ti­ga­tions. There have been op­pos­ing views from the AG and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. But Mendes, who rep­re­sents the AG in civ­il ac­tions, was very up­set at the lat­est re­sponse from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.