Former Fifa vice president Jack Warner has vowed to continue challenging his proposed extradition to the United States.
Warner made the statement in a press release issued on Thursday, shortly after the Privy Council rejected his final appeal over a preliminary legal challenge to the extradition.
He said he had advised his legal team to continue to press his case over the three remaining stages of the extradition proceedings, which were put on hold while he pursued the preliminary legal challenge.
He said: “I have lived in this country for nearly eighty years, and I am confident that I will continue to receive the love, affection, and respect that people from all walks of life have always extended to me. I am certain I will prevail in the end.”
A defiant Warner also sought to deny any wrongdoing in relation to the charges he is facing in the US.
He claimed the US investigation into him and his former Fifa colleagues was due to them selecting South Africa, Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts over the US and the United Kingdom.
“They were therefore not pleased and thereafter began a campaign against Fifa, which resulted in the arrest and prosecution of several Executive Committee members of Fifa who had assembled for a meeting in Zurich,” Warner said.
He noted that his colleagues from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, who were also implicated in the US probe, avoided the potential extradition as their countries refused.
“Trinidad and Tobago is therefore an outlier,” he said.
Dealing specifically with the charges he is facing, Warner questioned how he could be charged over payments that passed through the US banking system when he does not have a US bank account or property in that country.
“Furthermore, it is incredulous that allegations of misconduct arising out of a Fifa meeting held in Trinidad could be prosecuted in the United States, whereas, in Trinidad itself, it does not constitute criminal activity,” he said.
Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, also issued a short release summarising the judgment.
“The Privy Council has unanimously determined that no procedural or substantive unfairness has taken place preventing Mr Warner’s extradition to the USA,” Armour said.
“As Attorney General, I am able to assure the citizenry of this Republic that in T&T that the rule of law and due process are alive and well and the law must now be allowed to take its course,” he added.