Insisting that the greatest threat to justice was Government breaching the law, Bar Council President (allegedly corrupt attorney) Wayne Munroe yesterday challenged the Attorney General and Foreign Minister to explain Samuel `Ninety’ Knowles’ surrender or resign. Two weeks ago, Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell authorised the surrender of Knowles to the United States allowing for the accused drug kingpin to be escorted from The Bahamas on August 28. Mr Mitchell had reportedly acted on the advice of Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson who is said to have recommended Knowles’ surrender despite a pending habeas corpus hearing.
After preliminary investigations into the matter, Mr Munroe said he and the Council had found nothing in law to support the surrender of Knowles to US officials while an appeal against extradition was outstanding.
“There is nothing more dangerous to the administration of justice than the government breaking the rule of law,” Mr Munroe told The Nassau Guardian in an exclusive interview, adding: “He had the habeas corpus set for hearing, if I am not mistaken, on the twenty-first and twenty-second of this month, which means that everybody knew that there was another case. And the extradition act says that you’re not to be surrendered until your challenges are finished and so that’s very important – that’s very vital because that would be akin to citizen A suing Citizen B in court and before the case is over, the state stepping in and deciding as the state that citizen A or B should get what they are in court for.”
While revealing that the Bar Council was eager to receive an explanation for the government’s action in the case, Mr Munroe said: “If this is an aberration because somebody made a cataclysmic mistake, a consequence for that politician is resignation or removal. No doubt these two ministers being attorneys will search their consciences once they are in possession of all the facts and they will realise that if, in fact, this is a mistake then one way to demonstrate this is a mistake is to admit it. And with something this significant resignation will necessarily follow.”
If the government had made a mistake in surrendering Knowles, and failed to own up to their error, then the public would have every reason to be very afraid, said Mr Munroe.
Since resignation was a matter of conscience, Mr Munroe said the Prime Minister would have to decide on a course of action if the ministers did not resign. He said pressure from external states or the internal pressures from citizens were the only ways to compel the government when it breaches law. He said the rule of law was a primary concern of the (notoriously corrupt) Bar Council and that the whole area of law should just as well be dropped if the government were not subject to it.
“You have no excuse for taking the law into your own hands” he said. “That is something that lawyers jealously guard, not in our own self-interest, but in the interest of order.
“The man in Kemp Road and Bain Town must have certain that the law applies to everybody, from the poorest most powerless to the richest most powerful person. It is a very, very dangerous thing if people believe that your rights ill not be respected”
That Knowles, whose lawyers have proposed contempt of court proceedings against Mr Mitchell, was surrendered with the appeal ending suggests that he was not extradited but merely expelled,” said Mr Munroe.
A government spokesman did not return calls from the Nassau Guardian yesterday.
By RAYMOND KONGWA Guardian Senior Reporter
