Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive Jack Warn­er says while he is re­lieved that US ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against him have been per­ma­nent­ly stayed, he is still un­easy as he seeks to move on with his life.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Warn­er, 82, said he feels vin­di­cat­ed fol­low­ing the end of a ten-year-long le­gal bat­tle and thanked his le­gal team for their hard work and dili­gence in de­fend­ing him.

Warn­er said go­ing about his dai­ly rou­tine dur­ing the case was dif­fi­cult, as he re­peat­ed­ly wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he could be ar­rest­ed and ex­tra­dit­ed if his le­gal chal­lenges failed.

“Even now that the mat­ter has been per­ma­nent­ly stayed, there is the feel­ing that you can be nabbed at any point in time. You know the sit­u­a­tion in which we live and it’s not, of course, to say it can­not hap­pen ... it can hap­pen any­time but at the end of the day, I put my faith in God and say ‘well God will guide me and pro­tect me’.”

As he re­flect­ed on his per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ties in chal­leng­ing ex­tra­di­tion process over the past decade, Warn­er said be­sides his fam­i­ly, few friends and po­lit­i­cal col­leagues of­fered their sup­port. He said it was on­ly when the ex­tra­di­tion process against him was halt­ed last week that he re­ceive feed­back from some whom he said had gone “un­der­ground.”

“To­day, of course, these peo­ple are call­ing me and play­ing as if we were chum­my for the past ten years, and I smile and say hel­lo, thank you,” he said.

“In re­al democ­ra­cies, you are in­no­cent un­til proven guilty but in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you are guilty un­til proven in­no­cent and even then you’re still guilty. That’s the na­ture of the coun­try we live in.”

Warn­er re­signed as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ par­ty chair­man in 2013, af­ter the FI­FA cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions and US case against him sur­faced. How­ev­er, he ap­peared at sev­er­al par­ty events dur­ing the cam­paign for the April 28th Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

When asked about his cur­rent role in the par­ty and whether he was qui­et­ly “pulling any strings,” Warn­er in­sist­ed he had no prac­ti­cal role in the par­ty and en­dorsed the UNC out of his need to see a change in gov­er­nance.

“I helped some can­di­dates, I walked with them, I talked, I helped to spon­sor some of their events. Where I could put in some fi­nances I did be­cause I felt that this coun­try need­ed a change as nev­er be­fore and I make no apolo­gies for say­ing that and that is prob­a­bly part of the rea­son why I was ha­rassed the way I was,” Warn­er said.

“I keep in touch with one or two of the min­is­ters and politi­cians, but by and large I have tak­en a back­seat.” He ad­mit­ted that while he could not say for cer­tain what his lega­cy would be, his body of work spoke for it­self.

“I think one of the things they can’t take away from me is that I took one of the small­est na­tions at the time to the biggest stage on Earth in Ger­many in 2006 and that’s some­thing they can’t take away no mat­ter what I do,” he said.

“What my lega­cy is, I don’t know, but I know two things they can’t take away from me is my world cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion and two, the fact that I was able to help change a gov­ern­ment at var­i­ous points in time.”

Warn­er re­spond­ed di­rect­ly to al­le­ga­tions of bribery, not­ing that he was well-com­pen­sat­ed for his work with FI­FA as a vice pres­i­dent, con­tend­ing that there was no need to ac­cept bribes.

On Tues­day, High Court Judge Jus­tice Karen Reid ruled that Warn­er’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to the pro­tec­tion of the law had been breached due to the ab­sence of a key doc­u­ment re­quired to sup­port the US ex­tra­di­tion re­quest. She thus ruled the process was flawed, not­ing that the Ex­tra­di­tion Act of­fers pro­tec­tions for hand­ing over cit­i­zens for ex­trater­ri­to­r­i­al pros­e­cu­tion. Reid found that giv­en the re­cent change in the US gov­ern­ment, Warn­er may have faced un­fair treat­ment, as there was no spe­cial­ty arrange­ment in place.