Bahamian securities traders, Rohn Knowles and Kelvin Leach, have been on remand to for over 3 weeks now, since Belizean authorities picked them up when they tried to leave the country on a chartered flight. Well, as soon as they meet a 100 thousand dollar bail, they will be free to go.
That was the decision that Justice Denis Hanomansingh made this morning after hearing arguments from their attorneys and the Solicitor General's Office.
Senior Counsels Godfrey Smith and Eamon Courtenay argued that Belizean authorities have been illegally detaining them since their arraignment for the financial charges, for which they were granted bail.
As we told you as soon as they were arraigned before Magistrate Herbert Panton, they were served with a provisional warrant for their apprehension, and then sent to the Belize Central Prison.
Smith and Courtenay put for detailed submissions that the Attorney General Ministry did not give Leach and Knowles their opportunity to be heard by a magistrate on this provisional warrant of arrest.
After hearing from the new Solicitor General, Anita Jackson, Justice Hanomansingh found that the Attorney General's Ministry did not follow the proper protocol and violated the rights of the Bahamians when they were not presented before a Magistrate.
He was particularly concerned that he couldn't find any Magistrate's orders in the documents presented before him that the men had been denied bail after being given their opportunity to plead their case.
Outside of court, we spoke to both of their attorneys about the outcome, and here's what they told us:
Godfrey Smith, attorney
"The reason he did so was that he came to the conclusion based on arguments that the process was defective, that the government misunderstood their powers under the extradition act and just grab the men and sent them off to Kolby Prison without giving them an opportunity to challenge the basis of the provisional warrant for arrest, to make arguments to bail or any such thing, so he was oblige to grant bail."
Reporter
"The sum of $100,000 each, can you explain how this was derived?"
Godfrey Smith, attorney
"It's a matter for the discretion of the judge. Yes it's a steep figure but that a part I supposed the judge had some averments to the fact that it's an extradition related matter and so on."
Eamon Courtenay, attorney
"What we have here is an unfortunately, and I guess the judge upheld it, an application of the treaty completely outside the law. You cannot pick up people on a warrant that says bring them to me meaning the chief magistrate and just decide to take them to Kolby, so we pointed out to the judge first of all that that was wrong. Building on that we made the point to the court that we are not even sure that these are extraditable offences and before the magistrate can issue the warrant, she has to be satisfy that they are extraditable and that is why a hearing has to take place for that to be done. That was not given to our clients and there was the argument that where are here guys going to go? There are Interpol alerts for them, they can't leave Belize. If they go to Bahamas there is an extradition treaty there and we pointed out that the evidence from the government did not reveal any risk. They had to basis to say that here is a risk that these people are going to go somewhere."
But, as we've told you, Smith and Courtenay have been criticizing this extradition procedure by the Attorney General's Ministry before this ruling came down. Last week Thursday, we asked the Attorney General, and he dismissed being baseless, the criticism which the Judge says now turns out to be very substantial. For context, here are his comments:
Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Attorney General
"The matter is in fact in the process of going through the motions for extradition."
Daniel Ortiz
"Sir, the attorneys are arguing that without the actual requests, the formal documents which says that the US government wants these men. Your Solicitor General's office and government attorneys are pre-empting the process, thereby doing the work of the US government for them locally."
Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Attorney General
"I with my own view would be to dismiss that suggestion out of hand because before I left last week I called in the two attorneys who were dealing with the matter and I told them of the importance of being very circumspect in dealing with all matters that come before us. They are not supposed to do anything out of what is prescribe in our law. They can't pre-empt any action, they can't act because they think that in fact the United States will like to have this happen. I advise very strenuously against that and I am sure they would abide by their advice, so I would not entertain this suggestion that in fact they are jumping the gun, I am pretty confident that they are acting very properly in what they are doing."
The conditions of the bail is that the men must report to the Queen Street Police Station every Monday and Friday until the extradition proceedings are completed. Additionally, their travel document, which were confiscated by the Financial intelligence Unit, will be handed over to the Clerk of the Magistrate's Court.
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