The Caribbean Court of Justice has ruled in favour of T&T national Derek Ramsamooj, in a case brought against the State of Suriname.
Since 2014, Mr Ramsamooj had travelled regularly to Suriname to provide consultancy services, however in October 2020, he was detained and his passports seized as part of a fraud investigation into the previous Surinamese Government.
Mr Ramsamooj was held without direct access to a lawyer under two consecutive eight-day beperking orders, interrogated in Dutch through a translator, and signed a Dutch-language statement later used in court as his confession.
He was released on December 22nd 2020 due to his deteriorating health, with his passports returned in September 2022.
In its ruling, the court found that Suriname breached the treaty right to freedom of movement of a Trinidadian national by denying him direct access to a lawyer.
The CCJ said, “The Court established that the Treaty rights of CARICOM nationals (including freedom of movement and the right to provide services) must be exercised against a background of minimum human rights standards, without which those rights would be deprived of their effectiveness. The right of an accused person to have access to a lawyer of his or her choice was found to be one such minimum standard, being entrenched in the constitution of every CARICOM Member State. The Charter, though not itself binding, serves as an aid in interpreting the RTC and in identifying general principles of Community law.”
It goes on to state, “Turning to the beperking, the Court found that as applied to Mr Ramsamooj, it deprived him of access to a lawyer at three critical stages: during police interrogation, during any challenge to the beperking order itself, and during any challenge to the lawfulness or continuation of his detention. The Court concluded that article 40 of the Surinamese Code of Criminal Procedure, in so far as it permits deprivation of access to counsel at the investigative stage without sufficient safeguards, falls below the minimum human rights standard required by Community law and unlawfully impedes free movement. In those circumstances Mr Ramsamooj did not need to establish discriminatory treatment based on nationality, and Suriname could not rely on article 226(1)(a) of the RTC to justify a domestic law that itself fell below that minimum standard.”
He was awarded US$30,000 in damages.
The court added that while any reliance in any criminal proceedings on any admission or confession obtained from Mr Ramsamooj during his unlawful detention would itself breach Community law, Suriname remains free to pursue proceedings on the basis of evidence obtained independently of, and untainted by, the unlawful detention.
