AG: Full support for CCJ

Despite his disagreement with certain aspects of the Shanique Myrie judgement, Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite is throwing his full support behind the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and hopes other regional states will sign on to it soon.
Speaking at Thursday night’s panel discussion on the recent judgement and its implications for Caribbean integration, Brathwaite told the packed hall at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination that he was “very heartened” by the CCJ’s ability to leave its seat in Trinidad and sit in Barbados and Jamaica, along with the court’s several final appeals coming from “ordinary Barbadians”.
“If our final court was still in London somewhere, [these appeals] would not have gone to the final court. So the CCJ has my fullest support as a Caribbean man and as Attorney General of Barbados, and I look forward to those countries that for whatever reason find it very difficult to sign on,” he told co-panellists Dr David Berry, Dr Tennyson Joseph and Orlando Marville, along with moderator Dr Wayne Charles-Soverall.
Brathwaite also said the Myrie judgement, which she won against the Government of Barbados on October 3, had sent a signal to fellow Caribbean people that “we have a court that should be our final court of appeal and a court that we should have supreme confidence in”.
He also stressed the need for training of immigration and customs officials, noting that one of the first things the Government of Barbados had done after the judgement was to sit with the local Immigration Department and discuss in particular the fact that a CARICOM national now had six months’ automatic right of entry, had the right to consult counsel or call a family member if denied entry, and could appeal his or her denial of entry.