Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The fa­ther of al­leged gang leader Ra­jaee Ali has pub­licly re­ject­ed po­lice claims that his son was in­volved in a plot to kill ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, while one of Ali’s at­tor­neys, Keron Ramkhal­whan, has de­nied that Ali made any threats against him.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed by the First Wave Move­ment in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Has­san Ali de­fend­ed his son against what he de­scribed as the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion “of peo­ple with no voice be­cause of al­le­ga­tions against them, be­cause they are in re­mand.”

Ali Sr not­ed that Mus­lims have con­tributed to the sta­bil­i­ty of so­ci­ety over the years.

“No must-be­liev­ing Mus­lim in his right mind would want to as­sas­si­nate judges and peo­ple that sup­posed to be do­ing their jobs. No Mus­lim in your right mind wants to desta­bilise the so­ci­ety,” Ali Sr said.

While he did not go in­to de­tails, Ali Sr said his son would have pre­vi­ous­ly as­sist­ed po­lice “on the ground”, not as an in­for­mant, but to “help re­solve some of the chal­lenges”. He al­so crit­i­cised harsh com­ments about his son on so­cial me­dia.

“It is un­bear­able. That is not Ra­jaee Ali,” he said.

Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, First Wave Move­ment leader Umar Ab­dul­lah called on po­lice to pro­vide ev­i­dence of the claims made against Ali and oth­er men de­tained “il­le­gal­ly” at the De­fence Force head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas.

He al­so de­mand­ed an im­me­di­ate end to the State of Emer­gency (SoE), say­ing there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it.

Ab­dul­lah fur­ther called for the clo­sure of all mil­i­tary de­ten­tion sites and for all de­tainees to be re­turned to “le­gal civil­ian in­sti­tu­tions”. He al­so de­mand­ed an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the ac­tions of the po­lice ser­vice, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as well as the re­in­state­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions and re­spect for the rights of all cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.

“This is not just about Ra­jaee Ali. This is about the soul of our democ­ra­cy. If they can do this to him with no ev­i­dence, no tri­al, no de­fence, they can do it to any one of us,” Ab­dul­lah said.

He dis­missed the al­le­ga­tions against Ali and the oth­ers as a “the­o­ret­i­cal pro­duc­tion” de­signed to fright­en the pub­lic and dis­tract from ram­pant crime.

Short­ly af­ter the me­dia con­fer­ence, Ramkhal­whan ac­cused po­lice of fab­ri­cat­ing a pur­port­ed death threat against him. In a me­dia re­lease, he stat­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Spe­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (SIU) in­formed him they had re­ceived “in­tel­li­gence” of a cred­i­ble threat to his life from Ra­jaee Ali.

“Based on this in­ter­ac­tion, it was sug­gest­ed that I re­con­sid­er my pro­fes­sion­al en­gage­ment in this mat­ter and take se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for my pro­tec­tion. I en­quired fur­ther about what se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures could be im­ple­ment­ed, but to date, I have re­ceived no re­sponse,” he said.

Deny­ing that Ali had threat­ened him, Ramkhal­whan said in­for­ma­tion dis­sem­i­nat­ed pub­licly by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice—that Ali had threat­ened his at­tor­neys from a mil­i­tary base—was false and mis­lead­ing.

“At no point have I, nor my in­struct­ing at­tor­ney An­war Ho­sein, been threat­ened by any­one,” he said.

He ex­plained that they were re­tained sole­ly to chal­lenge a trans­fer de­ci­sion made pur­suant to Sec­tion 7 of the Pris­ons Act and to pur­sue con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­ceed­ings.

Rais­ing con­cerns about po­lice over­reach, Ramkhal­whan said: “If the po­lice are will­ing to adopt and prop­a­gate this false nar­ra­tive of threats against Ra­jaee Ali as a means to im­pede ef­fec­tive le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, I must ask: how far will they go to si­lence lawyers and hin­der ac­cess to jus­tice in this coun­try?”

He said the sit­u­a­tion rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about re­spect for le­gal rights and the in­de­pen­dence of le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers in T&T.

Ali was among the high-pro­file pris­on­ers who were trans­ferred to Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay from the Max­i­mum State Prison fol­low­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency. The SoE was de­clared based on in­tel­li­gence that or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs, op­er­at­ing from with­in and out­side the prison sys­tem, were co­or­di­nat­ing as­sas­si­na­tions, kid­nap­pings, and rob­beries tar­get­ing high-lev­el of­fi­cials and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

Ali and ten men are cur­rent­ly await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC, in 2014.