17 people receive Presidential Pardons

Sev­en­teen peo­ple have re­ceived War­rants of Pres­i­den­tial Par­don fol­low­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by the Min­istry of Jus­tice.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj, who chairs the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the Pow­er of Par­don, al­so known as the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee, pre­sent­ed the war­rants at the min­istry's Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters on Tues­day.

The min­istry did not iden­ti­fy the re­cip­i­ents or pro­vide de­tails of the of­fences for which they were par­doned.

Ma­haraj thanked mem­bers of the com­mit­tee and its sec­re­tari­at for their work and ac­knowl­edged the back­log in pro­cess­ing ap­pli­ca­tions. He said the min­istry re­mained com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and time­li­ness of the process.

The Mer­cy Com­mit­tee ad­vis­es the Pres­i­dent on ap­pli­ca­tions for the ex­er­cise of the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er of par­don, in­clud­ing whether a par­don or oth­er form of clemen­cy should be grant­ed.

The min­istry said the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the war­rants re­flect­ed its com­mit­ment to re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, restora­tive jus­tice and strength­en­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.