Dear Editor,

I refer to the report in your issue of Tuesday, March 2, 2010, relating to the 2010 US State Department international Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR).  Your newspaper report stated as follows:-

“To compound matters the report stated that the country’s counternarcotics activities have long been hampered by a British colonial-era legal system that does not reflect the needs of modern day law enforcement.”

I have not had the advantage of perusing the actual report but I am curious to know in what respects Guyana’s legal system is hampered in the area of trafficking in drugs by what is referred to in the report as “a British colonial-era legal system.” I am sure that there are others, including members of the legal profession and the law enforcement agencies, who share my curiousity.

It is surely not necessary for me to inform your readers that the Constitution of Guyana, like other Caricom states, includes elaborate provisions guaranteeing the fundamental rights of citizens and persons residing in Guyana and those rights are enforceable by the juridical organs of the state at the instance of aggrieved persons, including of course, persons charged with narcotics trafficking offences.

I need hardly remind your readers either that the Constitution of the USA itself, together with decisions of the courts of that country, provide guarantees of the rights of persons arraigned before the courts for contravention of the laws of the USA.

Apart from the constitutional provisions, it must be mentioned that the Parliament of Guyana enacted updated legislation – the Fugitive Offenders Act 1988, as amended in 2009 – which provides modernised legislation for the extradition of offenders replacing the application of the Fugitive Offenders Act 1881 of the United Kingdom, which was the relevant law applicable in this country as a dependent territory of the United Kingdom. The procedures provided for in the Guyana legislation are invoked here when there are extradition treaties in force with the foreign countries concerned or when there are requests for extradition to a Common-wealth country.  If there is no extradition treaty in force between or among countries, particularly bordering states, the practice has developed whereby the transfer of fugitives into the custody of the authorities of the other state is facilitated.

It should be mentioned, however, that in the absence of treaty arrangements with a state, where a fugitive is actually returned to a requesting country no challenge by the fugitive to the manner of his or her apprehension may succeed.

In my opinion, it would certainly be useful if the US report had indicated some aspects of Guyana’s legal system which do not reflect the needs of modern day law enforcement.

Yours faithfully,
Brynmor Pollard, SC