GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) –  Lawyers representing Guyana’s Opposition Leader, Azruddin Mohamed, and his billionaire businessman father, Nazar “Shell” Mohamed, are seeking an order from the Court of  Appeal suspending the extradition committal proceedings in the magistrate’s court.

The lawyers said that their clients, who are wanted in the United States on fraud and other related charges, want the Court of Appeal to suspend the proceedings until a substantive appeal of an earlier High Court ruling decision on the Authority to Proceed (ATP)

“For the substantive appeal to be meaningful, the proceedings before the learned magistrate ought to be stayed otherwise, if successful in the substantive appeal, the proceedings before the learned magistrate may have well advanced or concluded to the detriment of the Appellants who would be committed to prison to await extradition or the outcome of habeas corpus proceedings,” the lawyers said in court documents.

Chief Justice, Navindra Singh had dismissed the case challenging the decision of Home Affairs Minister, Oneidge Walrond, to issue the ATP to Principal Magistrate Judy Latchman to hold the committal proceedings on the grounds of political bias by the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic-led administration.

The younger Mohamed is the leader of the main opposition We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) that won 16 of the 65 seats in the National Assembly following last September 1 regional and general election.

The Mohameds have been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for allegedly smuggling more than 10,000 kilogrammes of gold worth more than US$50 million and in the process failing to pay the relevant taxes to the Guyana government.

Last October, a US Federal Grand Jury unsealed a 11-count indictment on the Mohameds for alleged wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. Subsequently, the US requested his extradition to face trial for those alleged crimes. The extradition matter is now  before the local courts.

Their attorneys -Roysdale Forde, Siand Dhurjon and Damien Da Silva – are arguing governmental persecution, presumed bias, apparent bias, unconscious bias, bias of the Attorney General, and an erroneous decision by the High Court.

They say that the committal proceedings are likely to be completed within a one month period based on how Magistrate Latchman is scheduling the matter on the insistence of the US prosecutors.

“There is a most conspicuous and real risk of injustice, danger and serious prejudice occurring for which damages cannot compensate should the stay sought herein be refused,” they said in the documents filed with the Court.

In addition, the lawyers argue that their appeal has every likelihood and prospect of success having demonstrated a strong prima facie case to the entitlement to the substantive orders sought for the reasons and facts stated.

The documents state that Chief Justice Singh’s decision was premised on a number of errors of law and of fact which operated altogether to miscarry justice.

The lawyers say the judge erred in law when he failed to consider that Walrond’s decision to issue the ATP put at stake their clients’ right to liberty and other fundamental rights and required the weighing of innumerable factors set out by statute and common law.

In addition, the lawyers argue that the Mohameds are of the opinion that the presumed and apparent bias which infected the home affairs minister and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, jointly and severally, caused the ATP made against them to be void, a nullity, in breach of the rule of natural justice of no one should be a judge in their own cause.

The lawyers want the Court of  Appeal to quash the ATP which purported to impart jurisdiction to the Third Respondent to commence the extradition proceedings against the Mohameds under the Fugitive Offenders Act.

The Mohameds also want the Court of Appeal to find that the judge erred in law when he failed to consider that the classifications of quasi-judicial, judicial and administrative decisions were no longer relevant to modern administrative law as what mattered was the substance and effect of the decision under review (the ATP decision) rather than how it ought to be labelled.

Further the Court of Appeal is being asked to agree that the hearing judge erred in law when he failed to consider that Walrond’s decision to issue the ATP was not the end of the matter but that, if the magistrate ordered the committal of the applicants, the First Respondent would then be bound under s.26(1) of the Fugitive Offenders Act, Cap. 10:04, to make the final decision as to whether or not to issue the order extraditing the Applicants and so her impartiality was indispensable to the Applicants’ right to receive a fair hearing from an unbiased tribunal/decisionmaker.

The lawyers are also arguing that the judge also erred in law when he failed to consider that the appropriate test for apparent bias, i.e. whether the relevant circumstances, as ascertained by the court, would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility that the decisionmaker had been biased, ought to have been employed to determine whether or not the Home Affairs Minister and the Attorney General were infected by apparent bias.

They said that the respondents and the US stand to suffer no prejudice on account of the stay being granted.