WASH­ING­TON–UNIT­ED States law au­thor­i­ties have thanked their T&T coun­ter­parts for the as­sis­tance they gave in ex­tra­dit­ing Doreen Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty to the US to face charges re­lat­ed to her al­leged role in the 2005 kid­nap­ping of nat­u­ralised US cit­i­zen Bali­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj.

In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, act­ing as­sis­tant At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Mythili Ra­man, of the Jus­tice De­part­ment's Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, and Michael B Stein­bach, Spe­cial Agent in Charge of the FBI's Mi­a­mi Field Of­fice, said valu­able as­sis­tance was pro­vid­ed by the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion's Of­fice of In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs, which worked with its coun­ter­parts in T&T, to ef­fect the ex­tra­di­tion. The US At­tor­ney's Of­fice for the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia al­so pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant as­sis­tance in the case.

Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty, 47, ar­rived in the Unit­ed States on Sun­day, and was ar­raigned yes­ter­day be­fore US Mag­is­trate Judge Deb­o­rah A. Robin­son in the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia.

She was charged in a two-count in­dict­ment filed in Sep­tem­ber 2010. If con­vict­ed, Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty faces a max­i­mum penal­ty of life in prison. She is pre­sumed in­no­cent un­til proven guilty be­yond a rea­son­able doubt. Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty is the last charged co-con­spir­a­tor in­volved in the al­leged kid­nap­ping of Ma­haraj, Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty's for­mer boyfriend and fa­ther to one of her sons, who died as a re­sult of the kid­nap­ping.

The oth­er 12 co-con­spir­a­tors were pre­vi­ous­ly ex­tra­dit­ed and pros­e­cut­ed by the US At­tor­ney's Of­fice for the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia.

Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty is al­leged to have ini­ti­at­ed the April 2005 kid­nap­ping of Ma­haraj and pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion that al­lowed the kid­nap­pers to iden­ti­fy, lo­cate and track Ma­haraj. She al­leged­ly alert­ed the kid­nap­pers to Ma­haraj's vis­its to T&T, gave them in­for­ma­tion on his wealth, which was used to cal­cu­late the ran­som, and re­as­sured the kid­nap­pers that they had the right man af­ter the ran­som ne­go­ti­a­tions went awry.

The case was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the FBI's Mi­a­mi Di­vi­sion Ex­trater­ri­to­r­i­al Squad with the as­sis­tance of the FBI's Le­gal At­tache's Of­fice in Port-of- Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go. Spe­cial as­sis­tance was fur­ther pro­vid­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice's An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad and Homi­cide Bu­reau.The case is be­ing pros­e­cut­ed by at­tor­neys Matthew Singer and Tere­sa Wall­baum of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion's Hu­man Rights and Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tions Sec­tion.