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Dabdoub sounds off on Dudus and state of emergency
Published: Saturday | June 5, 2010
Dabdoub
Abe Dabdoub, Contributor
I HAVE refrained from saying much on the Golding/Dudus/Manatt, Phelps & Phillips/Brady/JLP/state of emergency fiasco as it is no secret that I have never considered Bruce Golding a fit and proper person to be in Government, much less prime minister.
It is, however, difficult to maintain silence against the background of the slaughter of the innocents that has been unleashed as a result of the misquided and probably illegal attempt to prevent the extradition of a person the United States has indicted for the alleged transnational crimes of drug smuggling and gunrunning.
The hiring of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips was clearly fuelled by a desire to prevent the extradition of Christopher Michael Coke. It was wrong to have done so. The prime minister was well aware that it was wrong, whether authorised by Government or by the Jamaica Labour Party. The evidence of deceit unfolded drip by drip in confirmation of the fact that the hiring was only a small part of a concoction conceived by a sick mind. The other part of that scheme involved the utilisation of trusted positions in government to develop a reason for resisting the extradition request on the basis of illegally obtained evidence.
Golding must be held accountable. So also the minister of justice, the solicitor general and the director of public prosecutions, who all allowed themselves to be drawn into the attempt to prevent Coke's extradition.
There is no doubt that Golding was aware, or at the very least ought to have been aware, that no illegality was involved in disseminating the intercepted communications to the United States. The court order required Digicel to turn over the intercepted communications to the commissioner of police (the applicant), Assistant Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds, Superintendent Iris McCalla-Gordon and Captain Richard DaCosta, acting head of the Military Intelligence Unit of the Jamaica Defence Force. See Exhibits DL 2A and DL 2B of the affidavit of Dorothy Lightbourne sworn to and filed in the Supreme Court in Claim No. 2010 HCV 01860.
Court directions
At Paragraph 13 of her affidavit the minister of justice recognised that the court gave specific directions regarding the handling of data recovered pursuant to the warrant authorising the telephonic interceptions. She states that included were directions that "transcribed information is disseminated only to those individuals whose involvement in the investigations giving rise to the warrants necessitates the receipt of this information".
The minister of justice/attorney general and the prime minister
are aware that there is a memorandum of understanding pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance
Treaty between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Jamaica. A committee comprising representatives from all four countries meets weekly and/or fortnightly for the purpose of settling investigative priorities, sharing information and dealing with evidentiary requirements in relation to transnational criminal matters. Coke was an "investigative priority" of this committee and the extradition request deals with the transnational crimes of gunrunning and drug smuggling.
Illegally obtained
The prime minister's argument that the evidence on which the extradition request is based was illegally obtained, and he therefore had to "protect" the constitutional rights of a person accused of transnational crimes, is therefore nothing short of a Machiavellian concoction designed to thwart the efforts of the United States in extraditing a person wanted by them for trial on alleged criminal charges arising out of the transnational crimes of drug smuggling and gunrunning.
The then commissioner of police, Mr Hardley Lewin, has confirmed that the disclosures to the United States was done in accordance with the law and the treaty. A reading of the indictment and supporting witness statements in affidavit form also makes it quite clear that the telecommunication interceptions are only part of the evidence, and there exists enough evidence, independent of the intercepted communications, on which Coke could be indicted.
What impelled the prime minister, therefore, to meddle with the extradition request by threatening the minister of justice that if she signed the warrant to proceed she should also sign her resignation? What was he trying to protect? It certainly could not have been the "principled" position he claimed to have taken since, no sooner was his political future as prime minister in jeopardy, he advised the nation and Mr Coke that the minister would now sign it.
It is also baffling that the prime minister publicly disclosed that the minister would now sign the warrant. Such disclosure alerted and allowed Coke to prepare and fortify himself to resist the execution of the warrant.
No matter how penitent Golding expresses himself, no one can accept his apology as being sincere since this entire affair has been enshrined in a web of deceit. People need to have trust and confidence in their leaders. He never once publicly called on Christopher Coke to surrender himself. But his action did forewarn Coke that the warrant to proceed would be signed.
Prime ministers cannot expect to remain in office after having engaged in such deceitful conduct. In every decent democratic country civil society would never condone such behaviour by accepting an apology from one who knew better. He should have resigned already.
Abe Dabdoub is an attorney-at-law.
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