Former FIFA vice-president and ex-government minister Jack Warner has won a decisive legal victory after the High Court permanently stayed the extradition proceedings brought against him by the United States, the Trinidad Guardian reported.
This brings to an end a decade-long legal battle that reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
In a 71-page judgment yesterday, Justice Karen Reid ruled that Warner’s constitutional rights had been breached through the conduct of the Office of the Attorney General during the extradition proceedings and ordered that the case be permanently halted.
The report said that the court also awarded Warner damages to be assessed on September 30, prohibited the State from enforcing previous costs orders against him and ordered the Attorney General to pay his legal costs.
The case flowed from a 2015 request by the United States to extradite Warner on corruption, fraud and money laundering charges linked to a FIFA corruption scandal.
Justice Reid found that while the original issuance of the Authority to Proceed was not improper, the State later failed in its duty of candour by allowing the courts to believe that a special or bespoke extradition arrangement prevailed between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States when, in fact, no such arrangement existed.
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