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SINGAPORE: A court rejected an offer by 22 death row inmates to seek information on allegedly private letters from two inmates to their lawyers and relatives that the Singapore Prison Service had forwarded to the Attorney General’s Office (AGC).
The 22 inmates, who are represented by attorney M Ravi, had initiated legal actions to obtain information from the Attorney General, including the identities of those who had requested that the inmates’ correspondence be sent to the Attorney General and the persons who sent the information. .
The inmates had contemplated initiating a judicial process against the Attorney General or his officials for alleged breaches of professional duties to safeguard the rights of the inmates, embezzlement of public office and damages caused by the breaches.
In a ruling issued on Tuesday (March 16), Judge See Kee Oon dismissed the requests, saying this was not the appropriate forum for such actions. He said inmates are excluded from such requests against the attorney general, and that the requested disclosures are “neither necessary nor relevant.”
The 22 inmates are: Syed Suhail Syed Zin, Gobi Avedian, Datchinamurthy Kataiah, Moad Fadzir Mustaffa, Hamzah Ibrahim, Iskandar Rahmat, Lingkesvaran Rajendaren, Norasharee Gous, Nazeri Lajim, Saminathan Selvaraju, Rosman Selhullah Pankarnkar Mashirman Tajoudman, Pashirrantman Tajoudmankar Mashir. Mohamed, Rahmat Karimon, Tan Kay Yong, Ramdhan Lajis, Jumaat Mohamed Sayed, Tangaraju Suppiah, and Muhammad Faizal Mohd Shariff.
Most of them are destined to be hanged for drug trafficking, except for Iskandar Rahmat, who is a former police officer behind the 2013 double murders in Kovan.
The main argument of the Attorney General was that the inmates had no basis to present their requests against the Government. Despite this, the Attorney General voluntarily disclosed all related correspondence they received from prisons for the sake of transparency.
The Attorney General also argued that the power of the court to order the requests requested by the inmates was subject to limitations in the law, and can be ordered against the Government only when there are specific civil processes in which the current case does not fit.
Justice See said that a previous court had noted that while the Prison Rules allowed prisons to make copies of inmates’ correspondence for administrative functions of detecting and recording letters, they were not allowed to forward such correspondence to the AGC.
If the AGC wanted to obtain these copies of the correspondence, it had to obtain the consent of the prisoner or a court order.
“However, the court also accepted that the incident was ultimately due to an oversight on the part of the AGC and was not an attempt to seek an advantage in the process,” Judge See observed.
He referred to a previous lawsuit that highlighted the risk of potentially frivolous discovery requests even before a case was filed.
“In my opinion, if pre-action disclosures could be ordered against the Government, it could conceivably create a situation where it would be easier to obtain information from the Government through pre-action disclosures than through the conventional discovery processes associated with judicial review, “he said.
It added that this would not only potentially open the floodgates for individuals seeking disclosures of information prior to action against the government, but would also be inconsistent with a decision that such disclosures are not routine.
He said that the appropriate forum for the disciplinary proceedings referred to by the inmates was the Disciplinary Court of the Lawyers’ Society, and said that the inmates “could have a cause of action against the Government through a civil action brought against the Attorney General. “.
According to lawyer M Ravi’s Facebook page, the inmates had to pay S $ 10 in costs.
