Info boss awaits verdict
(CNS): After two days of mostly closed door hearings this week, visiting UK judge, Lord Justice Sir Alan Moses is expected to deliver his decision, Friday afternoon, in the first ever courtroom challenge to an order made by the information commissioner. The first public authority to defy an order to release a document by Jennifer Dilbert, who retires in December, was the governor’s office when it sought a judicial review after she ruled that it should release a controversial report relating to the bungled internal police probe, Operation Tempura. Lawyers for the governor’s office have argued on a number of grounds including defamatory content that the document should not be made public.
The irony of the closed door hearing in the first judicial review of a decision by the information commissioner has not been lost on most and the visiting judge is also going to deliver his ruling tomorrow behind closed doors but it is hoped that the ruling will still be made public regardless of the outcome.
See related story on CNS
http://caymannewsservice.com/crime/2013/10/30/lawyers-try-keep-lid-foi-court-case
Category: FOI
Since when would this Law apply to the Governor? The statute applies to the Cayman local government.
This kind of statement makes my stomach sick. Enough said.
A rather extreme reaction to what is simply statutory interpretation.
Would you prefer that we apply the UK FOI Act to him, or do you think he should be above the law altogether?
Above the law is the best option.
Does someone think the Caymanians are too immature or too stupid to understand the truth? Or is it a case of CYA! The truth will set you free!
See the comment below. Definitely looks like CYA at a very high level.
As I posted earlier, "Although the official grounds for refusing to release the documents has been that the contents are defamatory it is now believed the true reason relates to the way in which the contents would show just how far Tempura’s investigations strayed outside the bounds of legality and also the way in which a substantial amount of the material obtained had been unlawfully removed from the Cayman Islands without the FCO realising it."
Over here in the UK more allegations like this are now being made and it begins to sound like the reality is that complying with the FOI request would show that the FCO and certain senior members of the Cayman Islands’ civil service lost control of Tempura for several months. One target is the oversight committee that has been described as, “doing everything but operate in an oversight capacity.”
I’ve also been told (but this is unverified) that Aina was very critical of several senior people outside the operational team for allowing the investigation to stray so far from their original game plan after Cresswell's comments on the Henderson arrest.
Hopefully, we’ll all find out soon.
Is it not just "Sir Alan Moses" as he is not sitting as a judge in the English Court of Appeal?
Sorry, but if you wrote it or said it- you will be found out.
Ethics cannot be twisted and it is high time people are called out on their actions and words. It is a new digital world. Thus, word and deed are now recorded so a person must learn to be mindful of their words and actions =ethics. Good for FOI.
"The irony of the closed door hearing in the first judicial review of a decision by the information commissioner has not been lost on most" By "most" you mean people with no experience of this kind of issue. When the issue in litigation is the provision of otherwise confidential information it is the ordinary position that arguments do not take place in public.
Sounds like they are prodtecting MI5 and or something else, after all piracy came from England, they have years of training lol!
19.42, you just mind that MI5 don't come and "prod-tect" you. Piracy may or may not have come from UK, but Cayman certainly embraced it, maintained and developed it…
You mean MI6 – MI5 only work within the UK.
Last time I looked Cayman was part of the UK. Did I miss a headline?
Cayman is not now and has never been "a part of the UK". It is an overseas territory of the UK.
If Cayman was part of the UK, we'd all be paying Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT (not to mention about 200 other taxes) and all UK and European Union citizens would have the right to work here without need of a work permit.
Mind you, without the tax breaks, very few would want to come here.
All of us are everywhere and don't forget it.