(Trinidad Express) Acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Carla Brown-Antoine received a copy of Jamaat-al-Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr’s contentious 26-page affidavit on May 6, and forwarded it to the acting Commissioner of Police shortly after.
Brown-Antoine, who will on Thursday be sworn in as a High Court judge, confirmed that her office did receive a copy of the Privy Council ruling as well as the affidavit.
“We got it (the affidavit) in May and sent it to the acting CoP. I was aware of what the Privy Council said and forwarded the affidavit,” Brown-Antoine said on Saturday in a telephone interview.
She said she planned to write Justice Rajendra Narine to tell him that she already has a copy of the affidavit and that she had also forwarded a copy to the office of the acting CoP James Philbert.
Contacted for a comment on the status of the investigations with regard to the affidavit, Philbert said he had not received a copy of the affidavit. Told that the acting DPP had forwarded the document to him, Philbert said, “I have not received anything personally.”
He said he was awaiting a copy of the affidavit, having read media reports in which Justice Narine on Friday instructed that the allegations be investigated. He said that upon receipt of the affidavit, the matter will be investigated.
The affidavit was filed on June 8, 2006, by Abu Bakr. According to the Privy Council ruling, it outlined a series of meetings between Abu Bakr and several senior People’s National Movement officials, including Prime Minister Manning, on the upswing to the 2002 general election.
Justice Narine, in his ruling on Friday, noted that the Attorney General did not issue a denial about the allegations in the affidavit, but instead referred to the document as being “scandalous, irrelevant or otherwise oppressive”. He said the allegations made by Abu Bakr against Manning “are extremely serious”.
Noting that after the 2002 general election there were several complaints flooding the daily press where citizens in marginal constituencies “were unable to exercise their right to vote due to intimidation on the part of the Jamaat”, Justice Narine added, “If the allegations are true, the Prime Minister made promises of State resources to the leader of an organisation which had made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the country, in return for the Jamaat’s leverage in the marginal constituencies.
“If they are true, they strike at the heart of our democratic system of government.”
