Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A case man­age­ment con­fer­ence is set for Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, on the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­peal of Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad’s April judg­ment in the mat­ter in­volv­ing firearms deal­er Brent Thomas, ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Amour.

Ar­mour gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

This was af­ter Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark posed sev­er­al queries on the mat­ter, in which Thomas was repa­tri­at­ed from Bar­ba­dos to T&T by TTPS of­fi­cers in late 2022. Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment, cit­ing the “un­law­ful ab­duc­tion” of Thomas by the of­fi­cers, caused a cross-bor­der furore which led to probes in both Bar­ba­dos and T&T.

Mark had filed his query for the Prime Min­is­ter to state if Thomas’ ar­rest in­volved an ex­tra­di­tion or­der; if any Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives were in­volved, the role of the AG’s Of­fice, who au­tho­rised TTPS to use a T&T De­fence Force air­craft for the mis­sion; and whether an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched.

AG Ar­mour said on May 10 this year, he de­liv­ered a state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the le­gal chal­lenge by Thomas (and Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre Lim­it­ed) to the AG and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s April judg­ment.

Ar­mour added, “I re­it­er­at­ed and em­pha­sised then, as I do now, what has al­ready been said by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, that the Ex­ec­u­tive has played no role in the events and the facts giv­ing rise to the judg­ment and com­ment­ed on by the judge.”

He said his state­ment had not­ed that his of­fice filed an ap­peal against the judg­ment.

“My of­fice filed an ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the Court of Ap­peal to hear this ap­peal ur­gent­ly in pri­or­i­ty over all oth­er ap­peals. The mat­ter is set for a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on Wednes­day 7 Feb­ru­ary 2024.

“This sub­stan­tive mat­ter is on­go­ing be­fore the Court of Ap­peal, and there­fore, ob­vi­ous­ly sub ju­dice, and Sen­a­tor Mark must know that it is a breach of (the Par­lia­ment’s) Stand­ing Or­der 47 to pur­sue any mat­ter which re­lates to ac­tive pro­ceed­ings in any court of record un­til the pro­ceed­ings are end­ed by judg­ment or dis­con­tin­u­ance,” Ar­mour ex­plained.

Mark com­plained there was an abuse of the sub ju­dice rule on mat­ters not be­fore a judge and ju­ry and un­suc­cess­ful­ly in­sist­ed on know­ing who au­tho­rised the po­lice to board a TTDF air­craft to “kid­nap” Thomas. Ar­mour said the mat­ter is be­fore a court of record, “Be­ing an in­de­pen­dent court of the Supreme Court of T&T and there was no need to en­gage in the spec­u­la­tion in­vit­ed by Sen­a­tor Mark’s queries.”

Mark al­so clashed with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on queries about the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ing in the re­struc­tured At­lantic LNG; and when the new struc­ture of At­lantic LNG takes ef­fect.

Young said Mark was ful­ly aware these are con­fi­den­tial com­mer­cial agree­ments that are cur­rent­ly be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed and the Gov­ern­ment had kept the pub­lic in­formed at every stage when there has been progress.

Young said ne­go­ti­a­tions are cur­rent­ly in the fi­nal stages and at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion when com­plet­ed, will be pro­vid­ed. Young said the ne­go­ti­a­tions will be to T&T’s ben­e­fit and the price struc­ture the Gov­ern­ment had rene­go­ti­at­ed over the past few years has re­sult­ed in over $17 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al in­come.

“The fi­nal share­hold­ing will be an in­creased share­hold­ing for the peo­ple at no ad­di­tion­al cost,” Young said, at­tack­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment’s en­er­gy sec­tor man­age­ment record, with a “loss of bil­lions”.

Re­gard­ing Mark’s query about a $5 bil­lion trade-off with Shell on a Drag­on Gas pipeline to the Hi­bis­cus plant, Young scoffed say­ing it was, “an ab­solute fig­ment of the Op­po­si­tion’s imag­i­na­tion!”