Guyana's Attorney General, Senior Counsel Anil Nandlall, has asked the Court of Appeal to reject an application by father and son businessmen Nazar and Azruddin Mohamed to halt the extradition committal proceedings brought against them. The proceedings before Principal Magistrate Judy Latchman are part heard and due to resume in the first week of September. In written submissions filed on the State's behalf, Nandlall argues that allowing the inquiry to continue would not undermine the Mohameds' separate constitutional appeal, and that no order currently restrains the Magistrate from proceeding.

The case has its origins in a ruling delivered by the Chief Justice on 24 February this year. That judgment struck down section 8(3B)(b) of the Fugitive Offenders Act as unconstitutional but left the remainder of the extradition framework intact. It also found that Article 7 of the applicable extradition treaty offers protection against the Mohameds being sent on to a third country. The pair are now appealing that decision, and their application to the Court of Appeal seeks to pause the committal process while the appeal is heard.

Nandlall's submissions rest on a straightforward proposition: an appeal does not, by itself, suspend proceedings that are already under way. He points to the Court of Appeal Rules and a ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice to argue that a stay is an exceptional remedy, granted only where an applicant can show that continuing proceedings would render the appeal worthless. The committal hearing, he contends, is a distinct statutory process that began before the constitutional ruling was even handed down.

Central to the State's position is Article 7 of the extradition treaty, which Nandlall says already guards against the Mohameds being extradited onward to face charges in a third state for offences that predate their extradition. He cites King v Director of Prisons, an earlier Court of Appeal decision, as authority that Article 7 provides exactly this safeguard. His argument extends further: even if the constitutional appeal succeeds and the challenged provisions fall away, Article 7 remains in force regardless, meaning the legal basis for the committal inquiry would not disappear.

Additionally, the State has supplied a diplomatic communication from the United States dated December 5 of last year, in which Washington promised Guyana that neither Nazar nor Azruddin Mohamed would be re-extradited to a third state for a pre-extradition offence without the appropriate minister's approval. Nandlall treats this as an additional layer of protection, sitting alongside the treaty provision itself.

On the question of what committal would actually mean for the two men, the State stresses that it falls well short of surrender. The Fugitive Offenders Act preserves their right to seek habeas corpus, to appeal on a point of law, and to apply for bail. Should the Court of Appeal later decide the extradition proceedings could not lawfully continue, any committal order could be set aside and detention brought to an end while those remedies are pursued.

Nandlall's submissions also draw attention to the length of the case so far. He notes that the committal proceedings have already been interrupted by the constitutional challenge itself, a related dispute over the Authority to Proceed, court vacations, earlier appeals and interim stays. He cites a recent CCJ judgment from related proceedings warning against the risk that repeated procedural interruptions could be used to delay extradition indefinitely.

The Attorney General is asking the Court of Appeal to refuse the current stay application and any future one, to reject a request that the stay application be treated as the substantive appeal, and to award costs against the Mohameds. The two men remain on bail and retain the right to challenge the evidence against them before the Magistrate. It now falls to the Court of Appeal to decide whether the committal inquiry can resume in September while the constitutional appeal continues in parallel.