Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has brought in former United National Congress (UNC) Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj (under the Basdeo Panday administration) to assist the government in resuming hanging in Trinidad and Tobago.
Dr. Rowley made the disclosure during a post-Cabinet press conference at the Diplomatic Center, Port of Spain last week.
He made his position clear that he supports the death penalty.
Already for the year l06 people were murdered.
The prime minister’s move came following the gruesome murder a 24-year-old policewoman’s body which was fished out of the water in the Gulf of Paria near the City of Port of Spain.
Nyasha Joseph, a mother of a four-year-old child went missing for about a week. Despite searches by the Police and Coast Guard in the sea off Port of Spain, it was two fishermen who were trawling for shrimp which discovered the body in their net when they were pulling it up to see their catch.
Joseph’s body was placed in a crocus bag with her hands tied behind her back and heavy concrete stones attached to the bag to ensure it did not surface.
A post mortem could not reveal the cause of her death because of the state of decomposition.
Rowley disclosed that the government had sought the assistance of senior counsel Maharaj to help ensure compliance with the standards set by the British Privy Council in the Jamaican Pratt and Morgan. The British law lords ruled that it is inhumane to keep a convicted prisoner for more than five years on Death Row.
Because of this ruling, the state had not being able to carry out the death penalty to meet the five-year limit.
Attorney General Faris–al-Rawi recently disclosed that there were 32 inmates on Death Row but none qualified to meet the hangman.
During Maharaj’s term as attorney general in 1999, he was able to get notorious drug dealer Dole Chadee and his gang of nine hanged after being convicted of murder charges.
