Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go-based po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Derek Ram­samooj, will have to sub­mit by Ju­ly 31 this year, their sub­mis­sions re­gard­ing their client’s chal­lenge of the con­duct of the State of Suri­name fol­low­ing his de­ten­tion in the Dutch-speak­ing CARI­COM coun­try in 2020.

On Tues­day, the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) set the dates for the mat­ter dur­ing a vir­tu­al case man­age­ment con­fer­ence (CMC) that was at­tend­ed by the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing both Ram­samooj and Suri­name.

Ac­cord­ing to the CCJ, the re­spon­dents to Rams­maooj’s sub­mis­sions will have up un­til Au­gust 21 to re­spond with the sub­mis­sions of re­ply, set for Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024.

In ad­di­tion, the CCJ—which is hear­ing the mat­ter in its Orig­i­nal Ju­ris­dic­tion—al­so has agreed that the two par­ties will seek to present an ex­pert wit­ness on Suri­namese law joint­ly, or in the ab­sence of an agree­ment, present their own ex­pert wit­ness.

The CCJ has set Oc­to­ber 10, 2024, as a re­serve date for fur­ther CMC, should the need arise.

Ram­samooj, 62, who holds both Trinidad and To­ba­go and British pass­ports, was sum­mar­i­ly de­tained in Para­mari­bo in Oc­to­ber 2020, and was not al­lowed to leave the coun­try un­til Sep­tem­ber 2022. He suf­fers from a range of med­ical is­sues in­clud­ing di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and se­vere coro­nary artery dis­ease.

A pre­sid­ing judge had or­dered the au­thor­i­ties in Suri­name to re­turn his pass­ports, not­ing that Ram­samooj had, at all times, demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to sup­port due process, and had con­sis­tent­ly stat­ed his de­sire to clear his name through the le­gal routes.

The an­a­lyst—who has worked in sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Guyana, Grena­da, St Lu­cia and St Kitts and Nevis—was told by Suri­name po­lice on Oc­to­ber 6, 2020, that they on­ly want­ed a state­ment to sup­port an en­quiry in­to op­er­a­tions at the Suri­namese Post Sav­ings Bank (SPSB).

Ram­samooj had con­duct­ed cus­tomer sur­veys for the SPSB, as well as bank em­ploy­ee sur­veys, in ad­di­tion to con­duct­ing two coun­try risk as­sess­ments of Suri­name in his ca­pac­i­ty as an an­a­lyst and re­searcher. The ac­tiv­i­ties were paid for by the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

The CCJ, which was es­tab­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2001 re­plac­ing the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil, al­so acts as an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal in­ter­pret­ing the Re­vised Treaty of the Ch­aguara­mas that gov­erns the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment, CARI­COM. —PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)