Former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has won a landmark legal victory after more than a decade of extradition proceedings, with the High Court permanently halting efforts to send him to the United States.It also ruled that the State violated his constitutional rights by unlawfully pursuing the case.In a 71-page judgment delivered yesterday, Madame Justice Karen Reid found that the continuation of the extradition proceedings breached Warner’s constitutional rights after the Authority to Proceed (ATP), which initiated the extradition process, was issued without the legal safeguards required under Trinidad and Tobago’s Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act.The judge further found that the Office of the Attorney General repeatedly misled the courts by representing that a special or “bespoke” arrangement existed between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States to protect Warner under the international “specialty rule”, when in fact no such arrangement existed.Justice Reid ordered that the extradition proceedings against Warner be permanently stayed, awarded him damages for the breaches of his constitutional rights and directed the Attorney General to pay his legal costs, certified fit for both Senior and Junior Counsel.The assessment of damages has been fixed for a case management conference on September 30, 2026.Central to Warner’s constitutional claim was the “specialty rule”, a long-established principle of extradition law which provides that a person surrendered to another country can only be prosecuted for the offences for which extradition was granted.Under Section 8(3) of the Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act, an Authority to Proceed cannot lawfully be issued unless adequate specialty protections are in place.The judge found that no such arrangement existed when the ATP was issued in September 2015.The court declared that issuing the Authority to Proceed in those circumstances breached Warner’s constitutional rights.The judge also ruled that the Attorney General’s representatives repeatedly represented before the High Court, Court of Appeal and even the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that a bespoke specialty arrangement had been negotiated specifically for Warner’s extradition.However, evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information request in 2023 revealed that no such arrangement had ever existed and that the State had relied solely on the general provisions of the existing extradition treaty with the United States.Abuse of processJustice Reid was critical of the conduct of the Office of the Attorney General.While the court accepted that the original misunderstanding may not have been deliberate, it found that once the State became aware that no bespoke arrangement existed, it had a duty to correct the record.Instead, the judgment states, the State continued allowing the courts to proceed on a false premise.The judge held that this amounted to a serious breach of the State’s duty of candour and constituted an abuse of the court’s process.She further found that positive representations were made before the Privy Council asserting the existence of a bespoke arrangement when none existed.According to the judgment, this conduct deprived Warner of an effective legal remedy and resulted in an arbitrary and fundamentally unfair exercise of State power.Justice Reid concluded that the conduct violated Warner’s constitutional right to liberty under Section 4(a) of the Constitution and his right to the protection of the law under Section 4(b).As part of the relief granted, Justice Reid permanently stayed the extradition proceedings against Warner.She also issued declarations that the State had violated Warner’s constitutional rights by:• issuing the Authority to Proceed without a lawful specialty arrangement as required by Section 8(3) of the Extradition Act;• falsely representing to the courts that a bespoke specialty arrangement existed;• continuing the extradition proceedings based on that false premise.In addition to ordering damages, the court permanently restrained the Attorney General from enforcing previous costs orders made against Warner in the earlier judicial review proceedings before the High Court, Court of Appeal and Privy Council.11-year legal battleThe extradition proceedings date back to 2015 after the United States requested Warner’s extradition in connection with alleged money laundering offences involving Warner and others associated with FIFA.A provisional warrant was issued for Warner’s arrest on May 27, 2015. He surrendered to the authorities the same day and was granted bail the following day.On July 16, 2015, the United States formally requested his extradition.Then-attorney general Faris Al-Rawi issued an Authority to Proceed on September 21, 2015 under the Extradition (Commonwealth and Foreign Territories) Act, allowing formal extradition proceedings to commence before the Magistrates’ Court.Warner immediately challenged the legality of the Authority to Proceed through judicial review proceedings.His challenge was dismissed by the High Court in 2017, while the Court of Appeal upheld that decision in 2019.Warner subsequently appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which dismissed his appeal in December 2022, paving the way for the extradition proceedings to resume before the Chief Magistrate.Following the resumption of those proceedings, Warner initiated fresh constitutional proceedings after information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the State had never secured the bespoke specialty arrangement it had repeatedly claimed existed throughout the earlier litigation.Justice Reid accepted that those disclosures fundamentally altered the legal landscape, ultimately concluding that Warner’s constitutional rights had been infringed and that the only appropriate remedy was to permanently halt the extradition proceedings.