Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour is set to con­tin­ue talks with the State’s le­gal team fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion tak­en by Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle ac­ced­ing to an ar­gu­ment raised by for­mer Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FI­FA) vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er in his lat­est US ex­tra­di­tion chal­lenge.

The move is the lat­est hur­dle in the han­dover of Warn­er to US au­thor­i­ties to face al­leged cor­rup­tion charges.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, hours af­ter the de­ci­sion was hand­ed down by Ear­le-Cad­dle, Ar­mour stat­ed he was un­set­tled by the re­cent de­vel­op­ment.

“This morn­ing the Chief Mag­is­trate ruled that the ques­tions were not friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious in re­spect of Mr Warn­er’s com­plaint on the spe­cial­i­ty ar­gu­ment on pro­ce­dur­al and fair­ness and there­fore she has re­ferred those ques­tions to the High Court for the High Court to de­ter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the re­quest of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, of Trinidad and To­ba­go to ex­tra­dite Mr Warn­er to the Unit­ed States,” he said.

Ar­mour, who was re­served in his ar­tic­u­la­tion of the rul­ing, ex­pressed con­fu­sion over the po­si­tion tak­en by the mag­is­trate.

He said, “The Chief Mag­is­trate went on to make find­ings of fact which dis­turbed me and I say that with all due re­spect be­cause all that was be­fore her was the af­fi­davit of Mr Warn­er and no ev­i­dence from oth­er par­ties and no cross ex­am­i­na­tion of any body at all, and I have been in touch since the de­ci­sion was hand­ed down this morn­ing with the le­gal team rep­re­sent­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

Last No­vem­ber, The Privy Coun­cil ruled unan­i­mous­ly that the for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent can be ex­tra­dit­ed from his home­land of Trinidad to the Unit­ed States to face cor­rup­tion charges. 

Warn­er has re­mained res­olute by the FI­FA de­ci­sion to give pref­er­ence to South Africa, Rus­sia and Qatar to host World Cup Fi­nals.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who was cau­tious in dis­cussing the mat­ter due to the rule of sub­ju­dice, al­so said he had not com­plete­ly re­viewed it and was not pre­pared to en­ter the realm of spec­u­la­tion.

“I too have not been able to di­gest every­thing that was said and it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me at this stage to at­tempt to com­ment on the de­ci­sion and the de­tails of the de­ci­sion,” he said.