Premature Verdicts Undermine Due Process, Stirring Widespread Unease in Guyana

By Timothy Hendricks- In the hallowed corridors of justice, where the scales of equity must balance the imperatives of sovereignty against the inexorable pull of international comity, the recent pronouncement by Attorney General Anil Nandlall has reverberated like a premature gavel strike. “Government Ready to Extradite Mohamed, Awaits US Request,” declared the nation’s chief legal officer on a public broadcast, evoking not reassurance but a collective unease among the Guyanese polity.

We, the sovereign people – guardians of our Constitution’s Article 138, which vests judicial power in an independent judiciary – find ourselves compelled to interrogate this hasty avowal. In a nation still healing from the scars of electoral strife and institutional mistrust, such statements risk transforming extradition, a solemn treaty obligation under the 2003 US-Guyana Extradition Treaty, into a political spectacle.

Why the rush to pledge fealty before the ink of a formal requisition has even dried? This op-ed, voiced through the lens of every man and every woman, dissects the perils of this preemptive posture, the gravity of the transatlantic charges, the sidelining of pertinent local apparatuses, and the undercurrents of anxiety that propel such declarations.

Let us first confront the specter across the Atlantic: the indictments levied by a United States grand jury against Azruddin Mohamed and his father, Nazar Mohamed, unsealed in a Florida federal court mere days ago. These are no trifling allegations but a tapestry of felonious conduct spanning 2017 to 2024, woven with threads of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, money laundering, and systemic graft.

The duo, scions of Guyana’s gold mining elite, stand accused of orchestrating a multibillion-dollar scheme to subvert the sovereign authority of the Guyanese state. Through falsified declarations and illicit diversions, they allegedly siphoned royalties and taxes from the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), funneling ill-gotten gains into a labyrinth of offshore entities.

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has compounded this with sanctions, branding them as enablers of corruption that undermines Guyana’s nascent oil-fueled prosperity.

These charges, if substantiated, evoke the archetype of kleptocratic predation – predators who feast on the public weal while the masses toil in penury. Yet, as citizens steeped in the presumption of innocence enshrined in Article 144 of our Supreme Law, we recoil at the AG’s alacrity. The Mohameds remain un-arraigned in Guyana; no provisional arrest warrant has pierced our jurisdiction. To trumpet extradition readiness sans requisition is to court the abyss of extrajudicial presumption, eroding the foundational tenet that guilt is proven, not proclaimed.

This disquiet is amplified by the conspicuous circumvention of the very apparatuses ordained by statute to shepherd such matters. The Extradition Act (Cap. 10:01) delineates a meticulous choreography, commencing not in the AG’s chambers but in the cloistered realms of specialised entities. Foremost is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the initial conduit for diplomatic notes verbales under Article 7 of the bilateral treaty, ensuring reciprocity and non-discrimination.

Thence flows the dossier to the Guyana Police Force (GPF), whose Criminal Investigation Department must execute any provisional arrest pursuant to Section 10 of the Act, safeguarding against flight risks without undue prejudice. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), as the guardian of prosecutorial independence under Article 187, then assays the prima facie evidence, certifying dual criminality – a sine qua non for surrender.

Only upon this imprimatur does the matter ascend to the High Court for an adversarial hearing, where the accused may invoke defenses of political offense or human rights derogations under the Treaty.

The AG’s office, while serving as Central Authority for mutual legal assistance, is ancillary, not architect. By vaulting these bulwarks, Nandlall’s utterance bypasses the GPF’s investigative sinews, the DPP’s impartial scalpel, and the judiciary’s deliberative forge. We, the people, demand: Why eclipse these sentinels? Is it inadvertence, or a calculated elision to centralise executive fiat?

The anxiety suffusing this premature salvo is palpable, a miasma that bespeaks deeper fissures in our body politic. Guyana teeters on the precipice of local government elections, with Azruddin Mohamed’s nascent We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party positioning him as a putative opposition bulwark against the incumbent People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).

His indictment – coinciding with his elevation as leader-elect – stirs whispers of orchestration, a transborder salvo to decapitate dissent. The AG’s alacrity may stem from a frantic bid for international imprimatur: in an era where Guyana’s ExxonMobil windfall invites scrutiny, signaling extradition zeal assuages US apprehensions over money laundering conduits, potentially unlocking favourable trade pacts or anti-corruption aid. Yet, darker motives lurk.

Political expediency, that perennial toxin, could impel this haste – to tarnish a rival’s halo before the hustings, invoking the ghosts of 2020’s electoral contretemps. Or perhaps institutional insecurity: the AG, ever the executive’s viceroy, preempts judicial reticence, lest a sympathetic bench invoke Article 153’s fair trial imperatives to frustrate surrender. These speculations, though unproven, underscore a systemic malaise: when legal discourse devolves into partisan jousting, the rule of law withers.

We now implore a recalibration. Let the GPF marshal evidence with forensic rigour; the DPP adjudicate without executive shadow; the Foreign Ministry negotiate with diplomatic finesse; and the courts render justice untrammeled. Only thus can extradition honour Guyana’s treaty commitments without abridging constitutional sacrosanctity.

The Mohameds’ fate, grave as it portends, must not become collateral in a game of thrones. As the people – diverse in creed, united in aspiration – we reject this anxiety-fueled precipitance. Restore process to its pedestal; let justice, not expedience, be our lodestar.  In the end, the true extradition at stake is that of our democratic soul from the clutches of haste.