The Office of the Attorney General knew since 2016 that there was no separate or bespoke specialty arrangement with the United States concerning the extradition of Jack Warner.However, that office failed to correct the courts and eventually made positive representations to the Privy Council that such an arrangement existed, High Court Judge Karen Reid has found.In a 71-page judgment last Friday, Justice Reid raised serious concerns about the conduct of the Attorney General’s Office under then-attorney general Faris Al-Rawi and expressed difficulty accepting explanations from Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes as to why the High Court and Court of Appeal were not told the true position.Justice Reid found that what began as an “understandable misunderstanding” eventually evolved into “deliberate avoidance wholly inconsistent with the expected standards of candour and forthrightness”.By the time Warner’s case reached the Privy Council, she found, the Attorney General had gone beyond failing to correct the record and positively represented that a bespoke specialty arrangement existed.“Not only was this not true, this was known by the Attorney General to not be true since 2016,” Justice Reid said.“Nevertheless, the Attorney General persisted in making these representations at the oral hearing before the Board, whose judgment was also premised on the same being true.”The findings formed part of Justice Reid’s decision to permanently halt Warner’s extradition to the United States, delivering the former FIFA vice-president a major legal victory after more than a decade of litigation.The judge found that Warner’s constitutional rights had been breached and ordered the State to pay him damages and legal costs.Breach of standards of candour At the centre of the case was a Certificate of Specialty signed by Al-Rawi on September 21, 2015, the same day he issued the Authority to Proceed (ATP) authorising the commencement of formal extradition proceedings.The certificate stated that an arrangement had been made with the United States providing specialty protections for Warner if he was extradited.Justice Reid found, however, that there was no separate or bespoke arrangement underlying the certificate.Mendes represented the Attorney General during Warner’s earlier judicial review proceedings and initially told the High Court that an arrangement separate from the extradition treaty existed concerning Warner.Justice Reid accepted that Mendes initially reached this conclusion from reading the Certificate of Specialty and that it was reasonable at that stage.But Mendes subsequently learned that there was no actual separate arrangement.Justice Reid found that despite this, the existence of such an arrangement remained a live representation before the High Court.“In the circumstances, I find it difficult to accept Mr Mendes’ explanation that he did not seek to correct the record because the existence of a special arrangement was irrelevant to the matters in dispute in those proceedings,” Justice Reid said at paragraph 75 of the judgment.“It was, in my view, quite relevant and specifically considered and at no point in time did the then-Attorney General or his Counsel attempt to set the record straight,” the judge said.Justice Reid found that by the judicial review trial on July 13, 2016, the Attorney General’s Office knew there was no specialty arrangement concerning Warner other than the treaty.The judge said the State could simply have clarified the position to Warner and the court.“Why this was not done remains a mystery, but I consider the Defendant’s failure to clarify this to constitute a material non-disclosure and a breach of the standards of candour expected of the Defendant,” she said.Justice Reid was even more critical of what occurred when the matter reached the Court of Appeal.She said she had “great difficulty” accepting Mendes’ explanation that he did not appreciate the need to correct the record because he did not notice that aspect of the High Court judgment and considered the existence of the arrangement irrelevant to the appeal.The judge found the purported arrangement was plainly a live issue, having been expressly raised in Warner’s Notice of Appeal and addressed in his submissions.Yet the Attorney General did not tell the Court of Appeal that no undisclosed or ad hoc arrangement existed.Justice Reid described the failure to correct the record as “wholly unacceptable”.She rejected the suggestion that it could be explained by oversight.“The failure to do so cannot be explained by mere inadvertence,” she said.“It is obvious to me that by this time, what had begun in the lower court as an understandable misunderstanding borne from a reasonable reading of the Certificate of Specialty, had evolved into deliberate avoidance wholly inconsistent with the expected standards of candour and forthrightness,” she said.‘Egregious and serious’ Justice Reid found the situation became more serious when the case reached the Privy Council.“At this stage, the Respondent Attorney General went beyond just a failure to correct the record,” she said.The Attorney General’s written case expressly referred to a “bespoke specialty arrangement” between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States concerning Warner.During oral arguments, King’s Counsel James Lewis also submitted that if the treaty did not align with the Extradition Act, a separate ad hoc arrangement would be required.“In fact that’s what happened in this case,” Lewis told the Board, according to the judgment. But Justice Reid found no such arrangement existed.“Not only was this not true, this was known by the Attorney General to not be true since 2016,” she said.The Privy Council dismissed Warner’s appeal in December 2022, clearing the way for the extradition proceedings to resume, but Justice Reid found the Board’s judgment was premised on the representation that the arrangement existed.Following the change of government in 2025, AG Jeremie investigated the circumstances surrounding the representations.Jeremie accepted that the High Court and Court of Appeal had operated under an incorrect understanding that ought to have been corrected, conceding that “the Office of the Attorney General is culpable for a breach of its duty of candour”.Jeremie also sought explanations from Al-Rawi concerning the certificate, instructions provided to the State’s lawyers and why the courts were not corrected.According to the judgment, Al-Rawi sought documents and requested that the State pay for independent legal counsel to assist him in responding.Jeremie declined the request.No affidavit containing a substantive explanation from Al-Rawi was subsequently filed before the trial.Justice Reid ultimately described the breaches of Warner’s constitutional rights as “egregious and serious”.“To permit the continuation of the extradition proceedings against the Claimant in the circumstances of this case would offend the Court’s sense of justice and propriety,” she said.