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  • 3 months ago
Former Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi is responding to the announcement by Attorney General John Jeremie, that an investigation had to be launched into the past management of the extradition request for former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner.

The former AG says the procedures he followed in the case were the same as the ones followed by former AGs, and in this vein he says, the Attorney General will also have to investigate himself. Rynessa Cutting has more.
Transcript
00:00Former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner has brought a constitutional claim challenging his extradition,
00:06arguing that the absence of a written agreement barring prosecution for any offenses not listed in an approved extradition request
00:14renders the authority to proceed invalid.
00:18However, former AG Faris al-Rawi maintains that the extradition law speaks to arrangements, not specifically agreements.
00:27Our extradition law says in Section 8 that you must have, Section 8.3, 8.2, 8.3, and 8.5,
00:36you must have a specialty arrangement with the United States.
00:41It does not say that an arrangement must be in writing.
00:45It does not specify the nature of that arrangement.
00:49And the law says in Section 8.5, once you produce the certificate, that's all you need to demonstrate that there is the arrangement.
01:01The certificate formally requests the transfer of an individual from one country to another.
01:07Al-Rawi further notes that extraditions have always been carried out in this manner,
01:13and points out that this challenge brings all extraditions into question.
01:17The United States of America, in exercising its request for extradition, pursuant to our extradition law,
01:27and operating upon the treaty which operates with that law,
01:31they have made approximately, let's round it up to 50 requests, just under 50.
01:37Trinidad and Tobago has entertained all of those requests.
01:40And what Trinidad and Tobago has done for the many decades is that it has signed something called a specialty certificate,
01:49issued under Section 8.5 of the law.
01:51And that specialty certificate says that the Attorney General certifies that you will not be extradited
01:58for matters to be prosecuted broader than what you're being sent for.
02:03He further believes this nullifies Warner's concerns about the scope of his prosecution,
02:09once extradited, and says he awaits the unfolding of the investigation,
02:15as Jack Warner's extradition case spans the tenures of several former AGs, including the current one.
02:22He has said he's investigating his predecessors.
02:27I'm telling you the predecessors include him, because he signed specialty certificates too.
02:32Can I exclude yourself from that?
02:34So if you're going to talk about specialty certificate,
02:37is Mr. Ferguson going to come down and complain about his specialty certificate?
02:42The former AGs also raising red flags over the fact that the state's new and recently appointed legal counsel
02:49has extended an apology to Jack Warner.
02:52I was surprised.
02:55I've only read the reports, I didn't hear it in court myself,
02:58that Mr. Strang would give an apology and a concession,
03:03but yet the letter says there is an investigation to happen,
03:07and people have to be told that seems rather precipitous and premature,
03:12if not dangerous.
03:14Runessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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