Govt always denied claims
Alleged $32m agreement between PM and Bakr:
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Attorney General Bridgid Annisette-George said yesterday that Government had always denied the allegation of Jamaat leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr that Prime Minister Patrick Manning struck an agreement with him over a growing $32 million debt.
And, she said, she did not see how the Opposition could find any comfort in the recent Privy Council judgment.
Opposition MP Ramesh Maharaj has called on the Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate whether Manning breached the Prevention of Corruption Act.
But Annisette-George stated: "The State has always denied the truth of Bakr's affidavit. In any event, the (State's) argument was that the affidavit was scandalous, oppressive and irrelevant, and the basis of that was that if one took it to the highest and accepted Bakr's allegations, then in itself, it was inadmissible, illegal and irrelevant".
Bakr had filed an affidavit claiming that an agreement was struck between himself and Manning to avoid the payment of the debt arising out of the destruction of Police Headquarters during the 1990 attempted coup.
The State had filed an objection in law to the affidavit. Annisette-George said the Privy Council determined that the courts were correct in striking out the affidavit. She said the judgment opened the door for the State to claim several properties of the Jamaat and Abu Bakr.
Former attorney general John Jeremie, who was responsible for initiating the case, had told the Express on Tuesday that the State had always maintained that the facts of the case "were not malignant". Jeremie now sits as this country's high commissioner in London.
On the assertion of the Law Association that Government was infringing on the constitutional rights of persons in its crime-fighting methods, Annisette-George said amendments to the Evidence Act allowed for use of footage from CCTV cameras to be used in the courts. The Law Association had stated that the laws needed to be amended to allow footage from CCTV cameras to be used in court.
Annisette-George said there were CCTV cameras in use prior to the Fifth Summit of the Americas, which was hosted by this country last month. She recalled the use of CCTV cameras in the solving the question of how the bombing by the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Independence Square, took place. She noted recently that they were also used in the case of a police officer who was murdered on Duke Street, Port of Spain.
On the lockdown, Annisette-George said residents of Oropune, Piarco, were consulted. "And I don't know that people were totally denied (access). There were certain conditionalities put on access to certain areas," she said.
