Tues­day's bomb­shell dis­clo­sure that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how pre­vi­ous T&T at­tor­neys gen­er­al dealt with the re­quest by US au­thor­i­ties to ex­tra­dite for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, re­quires clar­i­ty and light from the T&T Gov­ern­ment, as well as pru­dence.

At the heart of the is­sue is a doc­u­ment called a cer­tifi­cate of spe­cial­ty, which pro­tects in­di­vid­u­als who have been ex­tra­dict­ed from T&T to the US from ad­di­tion­al charges.

Such cer­tifi­cates are tra­di­tion­al­ly is­sued by T&T at­tor­neys gen­er­al as part of the ex­tra­di­tion doc­u­ments. The cer­tifi­cates re­flect the terms of a stand­ing spe­cial arrange­ment be­tween the two coun­tries that has been in place for years.

In Mr Warn­er's case, the tra­di­tion­al cer­tifi­cate of spe­cial­ty was ac­com­pa­nied by a diplo­mat­ic note from the US, which pro­vid­ed the as­sur­ance that Warn­er "will not, un­til he has left or has been free to leave the US, be de­tained, pros­e­cut­ed or pun­ished for any of­fence com­mit­ted be­fore his re­turn, oth­er than the of­fences for which he was ex­tra­dit­ed..."

It is clear that Warn­er and his lawyers do not con­sid­er that the com­bi­na­tion of the cer­tifi­cate of spe­cial­ty and the diplo­mat­ic note pro­vides him with enough pro­tec­tion from ex­tra­ne­ous pros­e­cu­tion. As a cit­i­zen of T&T, Warn­er is en­ti­tled to fight his ex­tra­di­tion to the US with as much vigour as his fi­nances al­low.

What is un­usu­al, on the face of it, is that T&T's cur­rent AG would launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what ap­pears to be an ac­cept­ed prac­tice in the ex­tra­di­tion of T&T na­tion­als to the US. It is, of course, Mr Je­re­mie's right, if not his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, to en­sure that the two-step prac­tice pro­vides all T&T na­tion­als with the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards to which they are en­ti­tled.

But it is quite ap­par­ent that Warn­er is not just an or­di­nary T&T na­tion­al. Putting aside the ex­alt­ed po­si­tion in world foot­ball that he achieved, Warn­er is a for­mer MP, min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment and fi­nancier of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that now forms the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. At one point, he was one of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's clos­est ad­vi­sors and he may still have ac­cess to her.

Giv­en the unique po­si­tion Warn­er holds in T&T's po­lit­i­cal fir­ma­ment, it be­hooves the Gov­ern­ment's le­gal team to as­sure the T&T pop­u­la­tion that the AG's new in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not a case of po­lit­i­cal favouritism or a pre­lude to a State-spon­sored le­gal chal­lenge to the ex­tra­di­tion re­quest of the US gov­ern­ment. In this cur­rent mat­ter, jus­tice must not on­ly be done, it must most as­sured­ly al­so be seen to be done.

The Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, there­fore, would be well ad­vised to treat this is­sue very, very care­ful­ly. The in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry arms of the US gov­ern­ment have been wait­ing for more than a decade to wel­come Warn­er to the US to an­swer in­dict­ments of mon­ey laun­der­ing, bribery, wire fraud and rack­e­teer­ing.

Giv­en what some have de­scribed as the capri­cious na­ture of the US ad­min­is­tra­tion, it would not at all be in the na­tion­al in­ter­est if the cur­rent pos­ture of the T&T Gov­ern­ment to Warn­er is brought to the at­ten­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Un­doubt­ed­ly, the T&T econ­o­my would not fare well if Mr Trump de­cid­ed to in­crease tar­iffs on this coun­try's ex­ports to the US from 15 per cent to 50 per cent, sim­i­lar to what he has im­posed on Brazil.