Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has re­quest­ed ur­gent ad­vice from his min­istry’s Lead Coun­sel on the mer­its of an ap­peal of the judg­ment con­cern­ing firearms deal­er.

And Ar­mour al­so said yes­ter­day that he’s sat­is­fied Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds didn’t in­tend to im­pugn the in­tegri­ty of the ju­di­cia­ry with re­marks made on Mon­day.

On Mon­day, Hinds spoke about the judg­ment by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad re­gard­ing firearms deal­er Thomas. Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment was high­ly crit­i­cal of the ac­tion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice con­cern­ing what Ram­per­sad de­scribed as an “ab­duc­tion” in Bar­ba­dos, where Thomas was ar­rest­ed. He was lat­er charged with pos­ses­sion of weapons.

Hinds said the po­lice will ap­peal the judg­ment to stay crim­i­nal charges against Thomas. He said lawyers for the state were di­rect­ed by the po­lice to con­duct an ap­peal in that mat­ter and it was an is­sue for the lawyers and the po­lice.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Ar­mour not­ed that the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is the de­fen­dant in the judg­ment.

“This is so be­cause this Of­fice is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for the de­fence of the State un­der our Con­sti­tu­tion,” Ar­mour added.

“As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I ac­knowl­edge that the find­ings of the judge in that mat­ter raise se­ri­ous con­cerns as to the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pri­ety of ac­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

“In­so­far as I am re­spon­si­ble for the de­fence of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pri­ety of agents of the State and, on the mat­ter hav­ing been brought to my at­ten­tion, I have asked to be ful­ly briefed on the facts of this mat­ter, and re­quest­ed ur­gent ad­vice on the mer­its of an ap­peal from Lead Coun­sel rep­re­sent­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

Ar­mour al­so stat­ed, “My at­ten­tion has al­so been drawn to re­cent re­port­ed re­marks made by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Ho­n­ourable Fitzger­ald Hinds, dur­ing a tele­vised ad­dress to the na­tion on Mon­day 1st May.

“The Min­is­ter spoke in the main to the hard work of the mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in the fight against crime and crim­i­nals in this coun­try and, to the fight in which all law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and all in­sti­tu­tions are en­gaged for ‘the soul of Trinidad and To­ba­go’. His re­marks al­so touched on the judg­ment of the High Court in the Brent Thomas mat­ter.

“In the course of his gen­er­al re­marks, the Min­is­ter made a state­ment that the ‘crim­i­nals have friends every­where in this coun­try’, which state­ment could be in­ter­pret­ed, in­fer­en­tial­ly, to im­pact the Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I have viewed the tele­vised record­ing of the Min­is­ter’s me­dia con­fer­ence, which has giv­en rise to the print re­ports ap­pear­ing in the print me­dia of the 3rd of May 2023. I have al­so spo­ken with the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter. I am sat­is­fied that it was not the in­ten­tion of the Min­is­ter, in any way, to im­pugn the in­tegri­ty of the Ju­di­cia­ry of this coun­try, ei­ther in any par­tic­u­lar mat­ter or gen­er­al­ly.”

He added, “The Min­is­ter, like all mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment of this coun­try, has a healthy re­spect for the in­tegri­ty and ex­cep­tion­al com­pe­tence of our Ju­di­cia­ry, a fact which is am­ply record­ed as we con­tin­ue to seek to per­suade the Par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion to sup­port leg­is­la­tion to make the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice—OUR Judges—our fi­nal Court of Ap­peal, to re­place the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee.

“As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I is­sue this state­ment to put as­sur­ance be­yond doubt on this im­por­tant sub­ject, which must not al­low any room for mis­chief.”