AL-RAWI’S LIESNM AG Exposed in State Deception

The permanent halt of Jack Warner’s extradition is not just a spectacular victory for the former FIFA vice-president, it is a catastrophic, self-inflicted humiliation for the administration of justice in Trinidad and Tobago. In a blistering 71-page judgment, High Court Judge Karen Reid did not mince words. What began as an "understandable misunderstanding" degenerated into a calculated regime of "deliberate avoidance" that breached the State's fundamental duty of candor. The Office of the Attorney General actively misled three tiers of the judiciary, eventually assuring the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London that a non-existent "specialty arrangement" with the United States was firmly in place.

This institutional deception lies squarely at the feet of former Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi. The court established that the AG’s office knew since 2016 that no such bespoke legal arrangement existed, yet chose to stay silent. Al-Rawi personally signed the Authority to Proceed (ATP) in this matter, yet during his tenure, senior external counsel actively maintained a fiction before the highest courts of the land. The political fallout for Al-Rawi must be swift and severe. He has left these damning judicial findings unrefuted, choosing not to submit an affidavit to defend his actions. Compounding this arrogance, he reportedly demanded State funding for private counsel just to respond to an internal probe launched by his successor. Taxpayers, already saddled with millions in legal fees for a botched decade-long prosecution, are now expected to foot the bill for Al-Rawi’s personal damage control.

The damage done to the country's international standing is immeasurable. By feeding outright falsehoods to the Privy Council, the State has compromised the entire legal architecture of Trinidad and Tobago. Our highest courts operate on the presumption of State honesty; once the Attorney General’s office is unmasked as an untrustworthy narrator, the entire system fractures.

From this moment on, defense attorneys across the country will weaponize the Warner precedent, stripping the State of any traditional benefit of the doubt in public interest prosecutions and extradition cases. While current AG John Jeremie’s concession of the State's breach was a necessary act of legal hygiene, it serves as an official admission of systemic rot. Faris Al-Rawi’s legacy is now permanently bound to a scandal that sacrificed the integrity of our justice system, leaving the public to inherit a broken precedent and a staggering legal bill.

Sarge

Was this the reason he was dumped as AG by the PNM.

.................LAWYERS, LIES, AND THE PNM: The Rot At the Heart of T&T Justice System

This isn’t just a failure of a few rogue state lawyers; it is a moral rot at the very top of the PNM administration. When Balisier House allows its top legal minds to treat the Privy Council with utter contempt, it proves that institutional deceit is deeply embedded in this government’s DNA.

For years, the PNM prided itself on good governance, but this judgment exposes a toxic reality: under Faris Al-Rawi, the state’s legal strategy was built entirely on deception. The leadership didn't just look the other way while lawyers lied to the courts, they funded, enabled, and protected the culture that allowed it to happen.

The collapse of the Warner case is the ultimate indictment of PNM arrogance. They have weaponized the state's legal apparatus to the point where winning political points mattered more than absolute truth, proving that under this current leadership, a license to govern is treated as a license to deceive.

Sarge