Minister dismisses issues raised by Chris Must List’s lawyers

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Al­though Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has agreed to is­sue a Min­is­ter’s Per­mit al­low­ing Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es back in­to T&T to at­tend his up­com­ing tri­al next month, he has not in­di­cat­ed if he will ho­n­our a re­quest to re­cuse him­self from the mat­ter.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions yes­ter­day, he said, “I don’t need to be part of that mat­ter.”

Chal­lenged on the lawyers’ ar­gu­ment about pos­si­ble bias, he hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Hugh­es’ stream­ing plat­form in con­tent pub­lished on May 24, 2024, whilst he was a po­lice of­fi­cer, Alexan­der re­spond­ed, “That sound­ing like too-too from a cow. I guess that’s cow dung.”

Told that Hugh­es’ at­tor­neys may call him as a ma­te­r­i­al wit­ness when the tri­al be­gins on Ju­ly 22, Alexan­der said, “They can do any­thing they want.”

At­tor­neys Criston Williams, Aaron Lewis and Blaine So­bri­on wrote to Alexan­der on June 25, re­quest­ing him to lift the Or­der of De­por­ta­tion on Hugh­es, which was pre­vent­ing him from re­turn­ing to the coun­try so he could be present for the tri­al, and to al­so re­cuse him­self from the mat­ter.

The re­quest for the re­cusal re­port­ed­ly re­sult­ed af­ter the le­gal team be­came aware of com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween Alexan­der (when he was an of­fi­cer) and Hugh­es re­gard­ing mat­ters which touch and con­cern the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Hugh­es.

As such, the team has sug­gest­ed that De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge be the one to rule in re­spect of Hugh­es’ re­quest to lift the De­por­ta­tion Or­der.

The at­tor­neys in­di­cat­ed that if Alexan­der re­fused to ac­cede to the re­quests, that he out­line his le­gal and fac­tu­al rea­sons in writ­ing, which Hugh­es could then sub­mit to the court if nec­es­sary.

In ur­gent cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed June 30 and ad­dressed to both Alexan­der and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Roger Gas­pard, Hugh­es’ at­tor­neys claimed, “The min­istry has not re­spond­ed to the ap­pli­cant’s re­quest that, should the re­lief sought not be grant­ed, writ­ten rea­sons be pro­vid­ed iden­ti­fy­ing the le­gal and fac­tu­al ba­sis up­on which the re­quest has been re­fused. The pro­vi­sion of such rea­sons re­mains im­por­tant to en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy, pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, and prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty in the ex­er­cise of ex­ec­u­tive dis­cre­tion.”

Ar­gu­ing that this mat­ter was ex­cep­tion­al, the at­tor­neys urged the DPP to get in­volved.

“The statu­to­ry dis­cre­tion gov­ern­ing whether the ap­pli­cant may re-en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­fend him­self against the pend­ing crim­i­nal charges falls to be ex­er­cised by the very min­is­ter who per­son­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in events form­ing part of the fac­tu­al ma­trix up­on which the pend­ing pros­e­cu­tion is found­ed,” the lawyers ar­gued.