Trinidad court permanently stops Jack Warner’s extradition case

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – A Trinidad and Tobago High Court judge on Friday issued an order that extradition proceedings against former vice president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), Jack Warner, to the United States “be permanently stayed”.

In addition, Justice Karen Reid ruled that the defendant should pay Warner “damages in respect of the breaches” of his constitutional rights, to be assessed by the Court in default of an agreement.

In the 71-page ruling, the defendant, the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago, was also ordered to pay Warner’s costs, certified fit for Senior and Junior Counsel, and the assessment of damages was fixed for a case management conference on September 30 this year.

Warner, 82, faces 29 charges from United States authorities for fraud, racketeering and illegal wire transfers that allegedly took place in the United States, Trinidad and Tobago and other countries between 1990 and June 2011.

He was arrested on a provisional warrant under the extradition request and later released on TT$2.5 million (one TT dollar = US$0.16) bail. Warner is one of several senior FIFA officials indicted following a 2015 US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice probe into corruption in international football.

In August last year, Attorney General John Jeremie launched an internal investigation into how the State handled Warner’s extradition case, after serious allegations emerged regarding misrepresentation and misconduct tied to a 2015 agreement with the United States.

Former Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle said in June 2023 that there was no formal written agreement between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States authorising Warner’s extradition.

The extradition proceedings were halted following the granting of an application made by Warner to refer a number of questions to the High Court for determination pursuant to section 14(4) of the Constitution.

On September 21, 2015, the then Attorney General issued an Authority to Proceed (ATP) pursuant to section 9 of the Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act, which authorises the commencement of formal extradition proceedings before the Magistrate.

On November 27, 2015, Warner commenced judicial review proceedings challenging the legality of the ATP, but those proceedings were dismissed by the trial judge on September 27, 2017.

Warner appealed the trial judge’s order, and that appeal was subsequently dismissed by the Court of Appeal on June 11, 2019. The Court of Appeal’s order was then appealed and dismissed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on December 17, 2022, making way for the resumption of the extradition proceedings before the Magistrate.

The extradition proceedings then recommenced before the then Chief Magistrate, following which Warner made an application on March 3, 2023, to refer certain constitutional questions to the High Court. Those questions now form the subject of this judgment.

These constitutional questions concern what Warner alleges are breaches of his constitutional rights arising from what he asserts to be an alarming breach of the State’s duty of candour during the proceedings.

In her ruling, Justice Reid said that the issuance of an Authority to Proceed in the absence of an arrangement with the Requesting State that guarantees the protections on specialty required under section 8(3) of the Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act, “constituted a breach of the claimant’s right to liberty and his right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law” as enshrined in the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution as well his right to the protection of the law.

She said that continuing the extradition proceedings against Warner following the proceedings in Privy Council Appeal of 2020, in which the defendant “falsely” represented that a special or bespoke arrangement on specialty had been entered into between the United States and Trinidad and Tobago regarding Warner, and “wrongfully obtaining an order permitting the continuation of the same on the basis thereof, constituted a breach of the Claimant’s right to liberty”.

She ruled that it also breached Warner’s “right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law as enshrined in Trinidad and Tobago Constitution”.

The judge said that the continuation of extradition proceedings against Warner in the absence of an arrangement between the United States and Trinidad and Tobago that guarantees certain protections constituted a breach of Warner’s right to liberty and his right not to be deprived of that liberty except by due process of law as provided in the Constitution.

She issued an “Order that the extradition proceedings against the Claimant be permanently stayed” as well as “an Order prohibiting and/or a final injunction restraining the Defendant from enforcing the costs orders made against the Claimant in the earlier judicial review proceedings”.

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