ATTORNEY General A J Nicholson said yesterday that lawyers for accused drug dealers Lebert Ramcharan and Donovan "Plucky" Williams who were extradited to the United States last Friday, never informed the court that any further action was to be taken on their behalf.

He was responding to a statement Monday by defence attorney Frank Phipps, who questioned the haste in which the government handed over the two accused to US authorities.

Said Nicholson: "As is their right under the Extradition Act, they applied to the Supreme Court to be released and that application was refused.

"On Friday last, March 16, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal brought by the two men from the refusal of the Supreme Court to grant the application that they had made.
The Court of Appeal is the court of last resort in extradition matters. Any further proceedings on behalf of the men would therefore be extraordinary in character.

"When the judgment of the Court of Appeal was handed down at about 12:00 noon on Friday last, none of the attorneys representing the men intimated to the court that any further step was to be taken on behalf of their clients. Any such intimation, particularly in the presence of the legal representatives of the government, would amount to notice to the minister of justice that further proceedings were contemplated, extraordinary though they might be."

Nicholson, who is also the justice minister, said Phipps, in a statement issued to the press on Monday and on the talk-radio circuit yesterday, sought to cast blame on the minister of justice for acting "with unseemly haste" in facilitating the removal of these men from the custody of the Jamaican authorities.

He said a simple telephone call could have been made to the minister of justice or to his office, to the solicitor general or one of the attorneys in the Attorney General's Chambers, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice or even to the director of public prosecutions to the effect that further proceedings were being contemplated.

".It appears that the allegation is that the minister of justice should have been able to divine whatever might have been contemplated on behalf of these two men. And now, Mr Phipps, unable successfully to question the legality of the action of the minister of justice or the jud gment of the court, nonetheless points an accusing finger at the government.

"I seek to point no such finger, but the objective bystander, now seized of the above information, is entitled to come to his own conclusion as to whose fault was it," said Nicholson.

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