The Commission of Inquiry has met yet another hurdle which threatens to pose further challenges in its investigation process, following a new request by the Attorney General Dawn Smith to redact months old testimonies relating documents published on the Radar Barges and the UK Military assistance.
This is according to the COI’s attorney Bilal Rawat, who made the comments on Tuesday September 7, during a live hearing.
He said the attorney general was seeking redaction of a number of documents which according to him can be sorted into three main categories.
The first included the redaction of email addresses and telephone numbers which he said is not an issue of the Commission and is acceptable.
However, he said the other two categories – Cabinet Documents and National Security – contain valuable information that is critical to the investigation process of the COI.
He said, “The reason we don’t accept it is what the IRU (Inquiry Response Unit) were asked to do was to provide a redacted version of the document with the redaction sought blanked out so they were not visible and the shaded version which allowed the material redacted to be still visible. They have done that, but there is a difficulty in assessing the redactions being sought because the translucent version and the blanked-out version do not match.”
He added, “The second issue is that redaction is now being sought in relation to matters which were canvassed at hearings and secondly, which relate to points that are made in the response. You would remember Commissioner yesterday Mr. Harry confirmed to you that no redaction of the response was being sought, what was being sought was redaction of the annexes but the difficulty of course is that the response does not correspond to what is being sought in terms of the annexes.”
AG had ample time to redact statements prior to publication
Rawat also said that the Attorney General had ample time to request redactions of the documents prior to their publication, which have been on the COI’s website for months.
He briefly cited two examples to justify why the information being sought after for redaction is so critical to the COI’s investigation process.
“You’ll remember that we during private hearings asked questions of members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in relation to EZ Shipping and about the radar barges. Those were at that time private hearings, but the Attorney General was given time by you Commissioner to consider the transcript and seek any redactions that she wanted, including on the grounds of national security. The hearings transcripts were then published and they have been on the COI’s website for some considerable time, he stated.
“From those transcripts it would become clear that I on behalf of the Commission asked questions of Customs officials, of the former Police Commissioner, of the Chief of Immigration that related to the radar barrages issue and they gave answers and we went into it some considerable detail… There was concern expressed particularly by customs officers over the use of vessels and that was used as a justification for moving into the Radar Barges contract. That was ventilated at the hearing and it is on the transcript. Similarly, the offer of military assistance from the UK is also something that was canvassed,” he further explained.
Rawat said these are all matters which are relied on by the COI which conflicts with the interest of the COI.
Use the application procedure for redactions
He advised the Attorney General to use the appropriate means to apply for an application of redaction and said the time has come where officials should stop using Public Interest Immunity as a means to have information redacted from documents.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Sir Gary Hickinbottom said he has no issue with granting the removal of email addresses and telephone numbers.
However, he said for redaction of the other two categories – the cabinet documents and the National Security Council documents – an application will have to be made
He said the application should be made by 4 pm on Thursday September 9 and he will hear the application at 9.30 am on Monday September 13.