PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – A High Court judge will rule on June 17 whether or not to allow the United States Government to be included as an interested party in the law suit filed by former FIFA vice president Austin Jack Warner challenging his extradition to that country on a several fraud related charges.

Justice James Aboud Friday heard submissions in the matter where Warner, 72, who has been on TT$2.5 million (One TT dollar =US$0.16) bail following his first court appearance on May 27 last year, is challenging his extradition to face 12 offences related to racketeering, corruption and money laundering allegedly committed in the jurisdiction of the United States and Trinidad and Tobago, dating as far back as 1990.

US law enforcement authorities last year arrested a number of FIFA officials as part of the probe.

British Queen’s Counsel James Lewis, who is representing the US interest, argued that Washington should be granted permission as it stood to be affected the most by the eventual outcome of the case.

In his lawsuit, Warner is asking the court to declare Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi’s decision to sign off on his extradition in September, last year, as unlawful.

Warner’s lawyers are claiming that Al-Rawi acted unfairly as he failed to give their client an opportunity to respond to the US’s extradition request before making his decision.

“These proceedings are a challenge for the extradition proceedings themselves. It will be nothing but an advantage to this court to hear the applicant on the extradition itself,” Lewis said.

He said that while attorneys representing Al-Rawi’s office were defending his decision, they would not be in a position to provide the court with information on the US’s extradition request, about which Justice Aboud would need to make a final decision.

James argued that the US government, as the requesting state in the extradition proceedings, were the ‘prosecutors’ in the matter and had ‘locus’ (or a right) to be heard in Warner’s challenge of the Authority To Proceed (ATP) which was signed by the Attorney General giving the Chief Magistrate the go ahead to begin committal proceedings.

“There is absolutely no doubt we are affected,” James submitted, arguing “the court can be misled if we are not here to make representations”.

But Warner’s lead attorney, Fyard Hosein, SC, said the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) required that an interested party prove that it was sufficiently affected to become a party to the proceedings as opposed to being merely directly affected.

He told the court that the challenges raised by Warner impacted domestic law, not international law.

“No foreign government has common law right to approach any court in extradition proceedings save and except where it is given the statutory authority to do so,” Hosein said.

“You need statutory power to intervene,” he said, adding that the US in its application to be heard has not raised any conflict with having the Attorney General representing its interests.