Lawyer says CJ was planning to go to police

Martineau, who is part of a team of lawyers representing the embattled Chief Justice, further stated that he saw no evidence that Sharma barricaded himself in a room when the police went to his home to arrest him on Friday evening. In a statement prepared in direct response to one by Police Commissioner Trevor Paul, Martineau said he wanted to put the record straight on the top cop’s claim that he had intervened to prevent the arrest of the Chief Justice.

“My intervention in the matter, as I made clear to both the CoP through two telephone calls to him and to his officers who were at the Chief Justice’s residence, was to inform them that I had knowledge of the fact that the Honourable Madam Justice Jones had made an order for substituted service of her first court order on Assistant Commissioner of Police Virgil and had extended the time for the service of that order.

“In those circumstances it was to me quite wrong for the police to attempt to arrest the Chief Justice, particularly if their reason for doing so was that the order restrained Mr Virgil and not any other police officer,” he explained.

Martineau said the Registrar of the Supreme Court, who was at the Chief Justice’s residence, informed the police that Justice Jones had varied the court to prevent any officer from serving a warrant to arrest the Chief Justice.

However, he said, the officers were of the view that they had their instructions to arrest the Chief Justice and “they must carry out their instructions.”

He said the police only backed down after a senior officer spoke via telephone to Justice Jones.

He added, “I wish to put on record that the police officers whom I met at the residence of the Chief Justice were courteous throughout. Further, there was no evidence to me that the Chief Justice had ‘barricaded himself in a room.’

“In fact I was informed by representatives of the Chief Justice that at one stage he was preparing to leave his home and go to the offices of the Fraud Squad but he refrained from that course of action on advice when he learned that the judge had varied the order.”