Azruddin Mohamed, his lawyers and allies have spent the last week trying to turn leaked internal correspondence involving five judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) into legal projectiles. By week’s end, it looked very much like a pile‑on against CCJ President Winston Anderson, one of the Caribbean’s most accomplished jurists.
Even Nigel Hughes roused himself from slumber to weigh in. However, the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC) has announced a “transparent and independent review” of the allegations, and Justice Anderson himself has responded to the allegations. I don’t expect this will silence the noise.
Azruddin is demanding that the court’s unanimous extradition ruling be overturned, despite the inconvenient fact that not a single judge registered a dissenting opinion. Even with the CCJ reeling from a scandalous breach of its ring of confidentiality, the prospect of that judgment being reversed is roughly equal to the likelihood of Azruddin’s maternal grandfather suddenly qualifying as “fully Afro”: implausible, except perhaps in the minds of those who entertain an elastic relationship with reality.
In journalism, timing is the difference between news and history. The content of the leaked emails first appeared in Trinidad and Tobago’s Sunday Express edition on August 9. The byline went to Mark Bassant, an award-winning investigative reporter with more than 25 years’ experience. The central focus of Bassant’s story was an apparent internal crisis in the CCJ. References to Azruddin’s extradition case appeared only as a footnote.
Who would leak confidential information? What’s there to gain? The motive, on the surface, appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaken the standing of the CCJ, not only before its Contracting Parties, but across the wider Caribbean. If there is another motive, I don’t see it.
Azruddin has the resources to benefit from such a leak, but there is no public evidence that he commissioned it. Had he done so, however, one might have expected the story to emerge through a Guyanese media outlet, perhaps with Gordon Mosley rather than Bassant and the Daily Express carrying the byline.
If not Azruddin, then who? A possible motive, and one that is gaining traction among practitioners of the legal profession in Trinidad and Tobago, involves Prime Minister Kamla Persad‑Bissessar and her United National Congress (UNC) party. Again, there is no evidence of this either.
However, readers might recall that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar vigorously objected to the reappointment of CARICOM Secretary-General Dr Carla Barnett. Trinidad contends that Dr Barnett’s second term was secured through an improper process at a retreat attended by only some heads of government, and has sought a CCJ advisory opinion on whether it complies with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
That challenge is only the latest in a series of disputes. On Venezuela, Cuba, regional security and CARICOM’s leadership, Trinidad and Tobago has increasingly found itself at odds with the prevailing mood of the Caribbean Community.
Though not a Contracting Party to the CCJ, T&T has brought this internal CARICOM quarrel before the Court. An unfavourable opinion, which is highly likely, could leave Port of Spain more isolated and publicly embarrassed. It is not hard to see how that prospect might sharpen anxiety within UNC ranks.
If actors aligned with Persad-Bissessar’s UNC orchestrated the leak, then it is easy to see how Azruddin jumped on the opportunity to create an escape hatch from a unanimous ruling against him. Where does that leave us?
The mature public should be able to take the concerns attributed to the five judges seriously while still extending Justice Anderson the elementary fairness owed to anyone accused in the court of public opinion.
Before Justice Anderson’s eloquent response, the Heads of Judiciary of Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago condemned the breach of confidentiality and reaffirmed confidence in the CCJ, its independence, integrity and competence.
Their message should rise above the partisan din. The CCJ is bigger than leaked emails, bigger than an internal dispute, and certainly bigger than the disappointment of one litigant in Guyana.
It is worth remembering, too, the life and record of the man being reduced overnight to a political cartoon. Winston Anderson was born in rural Jamaica, studied at the University of the West Indies and Cambridge, earned a doctorate in international and environmental law, returned to the region, built a distinguished academic career at UWI, served as CARICOM’s General Counsel, produced serious legal scholarship and was appointed a judge of the CCJ in 2010.
It’s true that a brilliant academic may not always be an excellent administrator. A court president can encounter real resistance, make difficult decisions or misjudge the temper of colleagues who are themselves experienced and deeply conscious of their equal judicial standing.
Let every concern be properly investigated. Indeed, hold the CCJ accountable, but allow the facts to emerge. When confidence in courts is casually undermined, it is not one judge alone who suffers; the entire architecture of Caribbean justice is put at risk.
This column was first published in the Sunday Chronicle on August 16, 2026. Correction to the original post: the date in paragraph 4 was changed from July 9 to August 9, and it was specified that it is the Sunday Express edition in the same paragraph.
