CARICOM Agrees Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty

by Leroy Baker, for LawAndTax-News.com, New York

11 July 2005

CARICOM heads of government agreed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty last week at their meeting in St Lucia, as proposed by the Legal Affairs Committee at its Guyana meeting last month.

Signing the treaty on Wednesday, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, said that the purpose of the Treaty is to increase cooperation in mutual legal assistance among Caribbean countries in respect of serious criminal matters and to combat criminal activity.

Under the Treaty, countries will be allowed to provide assistance in identifying and locating persons and objects; taking evidence or statements from persons; obtaining the production of judicial or other documents and examining objects, sites and premises. Further permitted measures of assistance include the temporary transfer of persons in custody to appear as witnesses; executing searches and seizures; tracing, seizing, freezing and confiscating the proceeds or instrumentalities of crime and facilitating the personal appearances of witnesses.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning said that the leaders had approved all the proposals put forward by a Prime Ministerial sub-committee on crime and security that met recently in Trinidad and Tobago.

"Basically, crime and security portfolio is being elevated in CARICOM to the status of health, agriculture or any other areas of responsibility and that is so because more and more, issues of crime and national security are assuming greater and greater importance in the region", he said.

Manning said that the committee had also recommended the establishment of a Council of Ministers responsible for National Security and Law Enforcement as well as a number of other committees including the Policy Advisory Committee of technical people at the level of permanent secretaries to further develop the region's response to the crime and security situation.

"We believe by these arrangements we have taken the issue of crime and security one step further to a significantly higher place, giving it, the requiste attention it deserves in the context of the aspirations and concerns of citizens of the various countries of the region," Manning said.

The countries signatory to the Treaty include Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

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