PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 12, CMC – One of the lawyers representing some of the people who have been moved from the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) to another location under the state of emergency (SoE), has denied police reports of attempts to murder him and other lawyers by some of their clients.
“I have observed numerous media reports where a senior police officer and the Commissioner of Police have publicly stated that I have been threatened and that individuals are attempting to assassinate me. I wish to clarify explicitly that I have never received any threats from my client, Rajaee Ali, or anyone associated with him,” a ttorney Keron Ramkhalwhan said in a statement to the media.
On Monday, Police Commissioner, Allister Guevarro, confirmed that several prisoners at the MSP at Golden Grove Prisons, east of here, had been re-located to a secret location while issuing a warning to attorneys that their lives could be in danger from the same prisoners whom they are defending under the SoE.
“The same attorneys who are fighting for them, they are threatening to kill them and the attorneys seem blinded by this blind loyalty. But at the end of the day we shall do what we have to do.
“I would have directed my men to do a duty of care and warn these attorneys, listen, your lives are in danger take precautionary measures. If they want to listen then can listen, if they not…that’s up to them,” Guevarro said.
He recalled that on the same day the police had warned the attorneys, a suspect had been detained “and described as one of the key proponents of this threat, we arrested him with weapons, some of them sophisticated weapons.
“He was subsequently interviewed and that matter is being investigated still but he has appeared in court already on weapons trafficking …so the police continue to work and we want to keep Trinidad and Tobago safe and I will continue to ask Trinidad and Tobago partner with us, keep giving us that information we need so much in the fight against crime.”
But in the statement, Ramkhalwhan said officers from the Special Intelligence Unit (SIU) Intelligence Department had visited his office and told him that they received intelligence of a credible threat to his life and he asked whether it was from outside prison and was told that it was solely from Ali.
“Based on this interaction, it was suggested that I reconsider my professional engagement in this matter and take security measures for my protection. I enquired further about what security measures could be implemented, but to date, I have received no response,” Ramkhalwhan said, adding that the Minister of Homeland Security, Roger Alexander, had publicly stated that attorneys must take their own steps to protect themselves.
“I wish to state in clear terms that the information disseminated publicly by the senior police official and the Commissioner of Police—that Rajaee Ali has threatened his attorneys from a military base—is false and misleading.
“At no point have I, nor my instructing attorney Anwar Hosein, been threatened by anyone. We have been retained solely to challenge a transfer decision made pursuant to Section 7 of the Prisons Act and to pursue constitutional proceedings,” Ramkhalwhan added.
Ramkhalwhan in his statement said that the Code of Ethics governing the legal profession in Trinidad and Tobago mandates that an attorney must defend their client’s interests without fear of judicial disfavour or public unpopularity, and without regard to any adverse consequences to themselves or others.
“This ethical responsibility is fundamental to the independence of the legal profession,” he said, adding that the situation raises serious questions about the respect for legal rights and the independence of legal practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago.
“If the police are willing to adopt and propagate this false narrative of threats against Rajaee Ali as a means to impede effective legal representation, I must ask: how far will they go to silence lawyers and hinder access to justice in this country?” Ramkhalwhan asked.
Ali, who was charged with others with the 2014 murder of senior counsel Dana Seetahal, had challenged his removal from the MSP to another location following the declaration of the state of emergency.
The Trinidad and Tobago government on July 18 declared a nationwide SoE based on the emergence of a highly threatening criminal network that is operational both within and outside of the country’s correctional facilities.
The SoE came nearly three months after ending a 105-day SoE aimed at tackling criminal activity with the police commissioner saying that police received intelligence reports indicating that organised criminal gangs, including individuals both inside and outside the prison system, had formed what he termed an “organised crime syndicate.”
Speaking on a television programme here on Monday, Guevarro told viewers that he had personally supervised the removal of the prisoners over the last weekend “and taken them to a safe place where they are no longer able to continue communicating with their persons on the outside.
“First we had the disruption of the threat. We now have the dismantling of that organised criminal gang,” he said, adding that “upon the initial removal of the leadership, what we see as a pseudo leadership or second in command” was being established.
“In order for that to be controlled we now have to have further removals,” he said, adding the police are aware of the “persons that need to be controlled and moved from that environment”.
CMC/fh/ir/2025