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Saturday, July 19, 2025

AG defends hiring of chief public defender

by

1832 days ago
20200713
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi responds to questions posed by the media following the opening ceremony of the Legal Aid and Advisory Head Office and Public Defender’s Department, Stanmore Avenue, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi responds to questions posed by the media following the opening ceremony of the Legal Aid and Advisory Head Office and Public Defender’s Department, Stanmore Avenue, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day heaped prais­es on chief pub­lic de­fend­er Ha­sine Shaik at the open­ing of the new of­fices of the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Head Of­fice and Pub­lic De­fend­er’s De­part­ment. He hailed the progress her de­part­ment has made since her ap­point­ment on March 2.

“Our chief pub­lic de­fend­er has been in court for a long time al­ready. She was the per­son tak­ing 10s and 20s and 30s and 40s of peo­ple to court to have them brought out for ear­ly re­lease un­der COVID mat­ters. She is the per­son who has been su­per­vis­ing the man­age­ment of our peo­ple who are en­ti­tled to ear­ly re­lease on ac­count of the amend­ments to the dan­ger­ous drugs act,” he said.

Al-Rawi ex­plained that while the de­part­ment is set to move in­to the Stan­more Av­enue build­ing to­mor­row, they are up to date with their work.

“She has agreed ful­ly in her po­si­tion that she will work from home, hire her at­tor­neys and have them work re­mote­ly and bring them on board so that we didn’t make a step, so on Wednes­day when we oc­cu­py ful­ly, it’s not be­cause we’re now start­ing. We’re al­ready start­ing,” he said.

The AG said some had ques­tioned his de­ci­sion to hire Shaik to head the de­part­ment, due to her links to the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

She served as a tem­po­rary in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor for the UNC, lend­ing her voice to their de­bate of The Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion and Dis­trict Crim­i­nal and Traf­fic Courts Bill in 2018.

Al-Rawi said Shaik’s con­tri­bu­tion in the Up­per House was among the rea­sons he con­sid­ered her for the post. He said she al­so im­pressed Gilbert Pe­ter­son SC, the Di­rec­tor/Chair­man of the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty.

He said: “Ms Ha­sine Shaikh I first saw in bril­liant flight op­po­site me sit­ting as a UNC bench sen­a­tor twice in my tenure as at­tor­ney gen­er­al, I was very im­pressed with her abil­i­ty and charis­ma and sheer bril­liance.

“Not on­ly was I im­pressed but Pe­ter­son and the board of the Le­gal Aid Ad­vice Au­thor­i­ty were equal­ly im­pressed and as you know the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is the per­son to sign off on all of the con­tracts and when the con­tract came to me, a few peo­ple said, ‘Are you crazy? You’re gonna hire a UNC to be chief pub­lic de­fend­er while you’re At­tor­ney Gen­er­al?’”

“I said to them what’s the rel­e­vance of that? What is the rel­e­vance of that if I am en­ti­tled as the first elect­ed at­tor­ney gen­er­al in I be­lieve 30 years to have a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and per­sua­sion? So what if our chief pub­lic de­fend­er had the courage to step for­ward and al­so stand up for her coun­try but from a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion? To me, that is how our coun­try is sup­posed to run,” he

The Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Build­ing cost an es­ti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion to com­plete and was one of sev­er­al con­struc­tion projects which con­tin­ued dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down to en­sure it’s com­ple­tion on sched­ule.


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