Justice Karen Reid found the Office of the Attorney General misrepresented a key document to the courts, including the Privy Council, in a case that turned on a protection written into every OECS extradition treaty.
Caribbean / Courts
High Court Permanently Stays Extradition Proceedings Against Jack Warner; Damages and Costs Ordered
Justice Karen Reid found the Office of the Attorney General misrepresented a key document to the courts, including the Privy Council, in a case that turned on a protection written into every OECS extradition treaty.
The High Court of Trinidad and Tobago has permanently stayed extradition proceedings against former FIFA Vice-President and government minister Dr Austin Jack Warner. In a 71-page judgment delivered on Friday morning, Madame Justice Karen Reid ruled in favour of Warner, bringing to an end a decade-long legal battle that reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The United States requested Warner’s extradition in 2015 to face 29 charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering. Warner surrendered to police upon the issuance of a provisional warrant, was granted bail and released. The proceedings centred on the absence of a valid specialty arrangement, a document required under section 8(3) of the Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act that specifies the precise charges an individual may face in the requesting state and protects against prosecution for other offences.
Justice Reid declared that the issuance of an Authority to Proceed in the absence of an arrangement guaranteeing the specialty protections constituted a breach of Warner’s right to liberty. The court further found that false representations made to the courts in earlier proceedings, asserting that a special or bespoke specialty arrangement existed between the United States and Trinidad and Tobago, breached Warner’s constitutional rights. Continuing the extradition process after the Privy Council proceedings, in which the Attorney General’s office had wrongly represented that such an arrangement was in place, was held to constitute a further breach of the right to liberty and the right not to be deprived of liberty except by due process of law.
A finding against the Attorney General’s office
The judgment states that the Office of the Attorney General engaged in a course of misrepresentation that deprived Warner of the opportunity to challenge the Authority to Proceed promptly and effectively. Justice Reid described the failure to correct the record, and the subsequent positive representation to the Privy Council of a fact known to be false, as a breach of the duty of candour and an abuse of the process of the court.
A serious dereliction of duty as guardian of the public interest Madame Justice Karen Reid
According to the judgment, Attorney General John Jeremie, after taking office in 2025, conducted an internal investigation and acknowledged that the Office of the Attorney General had failed in its duty of candour by not correcting the courts’ misunderstanding about whether a bespoke specialty arrangement existed.
What the court ordered
The court ordered that the extradition proceedings against Warner be permanently stayed. The Attorney General was directed to pay Warner damages for the breaches of his constitutional rights, together with costs certified fit for Senior and Junior Counsel. The State was also barred from enforcing previous costs orders made against Warner. Assessment of damages has been fixed for a case management conference on 30 September 2026 at 1:30 p.m.
Warner was represented by Fyard Hosein SC, Rishi Dass SC, Sasha Bridgemohansingh and Aadam Hosein, instructed by Anil Maraj. The Attorney General was represented by English counsel Robert Strang, instructed by Sheriza Khan.
Speaking to Trinidadian media after the ruling, Warner, 82, welcomed the outcome but said the decade-long process had taken a heavy personal and financial toll.
How the case moved
- 27 May 2015Provisional warrant issued; Warner surrenders, is granted bail and released.
- 16 July 2015The United States files its formal extradition request.
- 21 September 2015Then-Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi issues the Authority to Proceed.
- 2017 and 2019Judicial review challenges dismissed by the High Court and then the Court of Appeal.
- 2022The Privy Council dismisses Warner’s appeal, and the matter returns to the magistrates’ court.
- March 2023Warner applies to refer constitutional questions to the High Court.
- September 2025Justice Reid stays the extradition proceedings and reserves judgment on the constitutional claim.
- 17 July 2026The 71-page judgment is delivered, with damages and costs ordered against the Attorney General.
Why specialty matters here
The rule of specialty is the promise that a person handed over for one set of charges will not be tried for a different set once they land. It is not a technicality. It is the main thing standing between a small state’s citizen and an open-ended foreign prosecution.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines signed its extradition treaty with the United States at Kingstown on 15 August 1996, one of six such treaties concluded with OECS members that year. The rule of specialty is written into that treaty, as it is into the others.
Warner’s case did not turn on whether a treaty existed. It turned on whether the specific arrangement required by Trinidad and Tobago’s domestic extradition statute was actually in place, and on what the State told the courts about it. That is a question of process and candour, and it is one any Caribbean jurisdiction handling a United States request would have to answer for itself.
Warner remains wanted in the United States. The stay bars the Trinidad and Tobago proceedings; it does not dispose of the American charges, which concern conduct alleged to have taken place in the United States, Trinidad and Tobago and other jurisdictions between 1990 and June 2011.