Yasseen, Thomas can testify in contempt case
THE Full Court, on Wednesday, allowed an application by their counsel, Mr Stephen Fraser, for condemned murderers Abdool Saleem Yasseen and Noel Thomas to testify in support of the contempt charge they have laid against three Justices of Appeal. The ruling by Justices Desmond Burch-Smith (presiding) and Carl Singh was at the continuation of a hearing surrounding an allegation of bias directed at Chancellor Cecil Kennard and other Justices of Appeal Lennox Perry and Prem Persaud. That accusation was made after the Full Court, similarly constituted, issued a controversial order that triggered the so-called battle of the Courts. The injunctive restrained the appellate Bench from sitting in a case where the Attorney General and the Director of Prisons had challenged the decision of another judge which favoured the two convicts in their ongoing quest to avoid the death sentence. The Justices of Appeal were seeking to have that edict set aside when Yasseen and Thomas raised the issue of bias and said the judges cited were guilty of contempt because they had continued to sit on the matter despite the restraint. Fraser has since argued that the accused contemnors should not be heard until they have purged themselves. The decision Wednesday followed arguments, including by Senior Counsel Ashton Chase, for the Justices of Appeal, over the question of whether the Full Court has jurisdiction to try members of the highest tribunal. Chase is contending that the Judges of the Court of Appeal enjoy judicial immunity. Yasseen and Thomas have twice been sentenced to hang for the 1987 unlawful killing of Yasseen's younger brother, Abdool Kaleem Yasseen, because of jealousy over their surviving father's legacy.
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