Attorney General John Jeremie has confirmed that he has written Chief Justice Ivor Archie to complain about the conduct of Justice Rajendra Narine.Last Friday the judge ordered the auction of 11 properties owned by Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr to settle a $32 million debt to the state and also asked for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the acting Commissioner of Police (CoP) to investigate an allegation of a clandestine deal between Bakr and Prime Minister Patrick Manning.
In an affidavit submitted to the court Bakr alleges that Manning agreed to forgive the debt in exchange for certain favour, including the Jamaat's assistance in helping mobilise voters for the 2002 general election, which Manning's People's National Movement (PNM) won.
The affidavit was thrown out by the Appeal court in Trinidad and Tobago and again by the country's highest court, the Privy Council. In both instances the courts ruled that the document was irrelevant to Bakr's claim that he did not owe the state money on the basis of the alleged deal with Manning.
But when the compensation matter came before Justice Narine, the judge said the issue was too important to ignore and ruled that a thorough investigation should be conducted, noting that no one is above the law.
The response from acting DPP Carla Brown-Antoine was that she had submitted the affidavit to Acting Commissioner of Police James Philbert, but Philbert said he had not seen the document. However he said police would investigate.
On Monday Jeremie told the House of Representatives there would be no investigation because the affidavit was based on falsehoods and suggested that the judge was out of line to make such a ruling when two higher courts had already dismissed the document as irrelevant.
“The action which Justice Narine took in this instance is to be contrasted with that of the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council, both of which despite having the affidavit before them, did not think it fit in effect to require that a criminal investigation be carried out into the allegations made in Mr Bakr’s affidavit, no doubt confident that the relevant authorities would do their job as they have in fact done,” Jeremie told the House.
What Jeremie omitted was that the Privy Council ruling said Manning could not have made such a deal on behalf of the state and therefore the affidavit was irrelevant.
However the law lords were clear that if such an agreement were made it would have been a breach of the country's anti-corruption law by both Manning and Bakr.
Jeremie said Justice Narine did not consider whether the alleged agreement was illegal and unenforceable but decided the application to strike out the affidavit, which was before him, was premature.
"In other words, the judge wanted the Prime Minister before him and he wanted to cross-examine him," Jeremie said.
Archie was one of three Justices of Appeal who ruled on Bakr’s affidavit. So far the Chief Justice has not received the Jeremie's letter and the Law Association, which recently passed a motion of no confidence in Jeremie, has said it would not comment publicly on the matter for now.
Jeremie has insisted that the judge was responding to "a concocted story from a man without a shred of credibility in this country".
Some opposition MPs interpreted the AG's statement as threatening a judge of the High Court. The opposition has called for an independent investigation of the allegations made by Bakr.
The Manning-Bakr story made headlines on a blog titled: International Terror Alert, a private homeland security blog not associated with any U.S. government agency.
But the blog removed the story, without updating it with Jeremie's statements, saying: "We have received a couple of messages that the Prime Minister has strongly disputed the claims in the following stories. This site simply aggregates stories from a variety of online news sources."
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