An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali have been grant­ed ac­cess to see him af­ter he was re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca and placed in the mil­i­tary’s cus­tody at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

His lawyers have been told they will be grant­ed vir­tu­al ac­cess to him af­ter ini­tial­ly be­ing re­fused phys­i­cal meet­ings. The ac­qui­es­cence by act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­rapse came via at­tor­neys Pamela El­der, SC and Richard Ma­son around 5.30 pm yes­ter­day.

At­tor­neys Keron Ramkhal­wan and An­war Ho­sein are rep­re­sent­ing Ali.

Ramkhal­wan was ad­vised that vir­tu­al ac­cess had been grant­ed and that arrange­ments were be­ing fi­nalised for the vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ali to­day.

An elec­tron­ic link is ex­pect­ed to be pro­vid­ed to the le­gal team to en­able said com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Ali was trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in the wee hours of Ju­ly 18, min­utes af­ter the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was pro­claimed.

Cor­raspe’s le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­di­cat­ed the trans­fer had been done un­der the au­thor­i­ty of the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons act­ing in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion (7) of the Prison Act, Chap­ter 13:01, which pro­vides as fol­lows: “The Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons may trans­fer pris­on­ers from any prison to any oth­er prison as in his dis­cre­tion may be nec­es­sary.”

Mean­while, Ramkhal­wan, along with at­tor­ney Nicole Ma­haraj, are rep­re­sent­ing Robert Paul, who is al­leged to be the head of the Re­sis­tance Gang.

He, too, was re­lo­cat­ed to Teteron, and just like Ali, lawyers were pre­vi­ous­ly pre­vent­ed from meet­ing with him.

How­ev­er, the two were in­formed yes­ter­day that they would have been al­lowed ac­cess to both men to­day.

An at­tor­ney who went to Teteron Bar­racks just af­ter 2 pm yes­ter­day was de­nied ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty by two heav­i­ly armed and masked of­fi­cers.

Paul and Ali were said to be among six high-risk pris­on­ers re­lo­cat­ed from MSP to the mil­i­tary-manned base dur­ing the wee hours of Ju­ly 18.

A Habeas Cor­pus filed by Ali’s wife, Sta­cy Grif­fith, hours af­ter he was re­lo­cat­ed, was dis­missed by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, dur­ing the first 24 hours of the State of Emer­gency.

Ali, a First Di­vi­sion pris­on­er, was re­mand­ed at MSP await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC on May 4, 2014, along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street, Wood­brook.

Mean­while, there were re­ports that pris­on­ers be­ing held at Teteron Bar­racks had em­barked on a hunger strike to protest the re­lo­ca­tion to the fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing some of the pris­on­ers said they had no in­for­ma­tion on this.

On Ju­ly 18 af­ter an­nounc­ing the SoE, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was de­clared due to an or­gan­ised and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing in­side and out­side of the prison sys­tem.