SINGAPORE — The hearing for the appeal of a civil suit by 13 prisoners at the Court of Appeal against the Attorney-General (AG) was adjourned after the Chief Justice had instructed additional information to be provided by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC).
The 13 prisoners, 12 of whom are on death row, had filed a joint application to seek a court declaration against the AG and the Singapore Prison Service (SPS) for alleged copyright infringement over the illegitimate copying and forwarding of their private correspondences.
The forwarding of letters came to light in the course of criminal proceedings of the stay of execution application of Syed Suhail and two of the 13 prisoners, Gobi a/l Avedian and Datchinamurthy a/l Kataiahm, in 2020. The Court of Appeal ruled that this was “impermissible” under prison regulations.
The two were represented by Mr M Ravi, a human rights lawyer who has since been suspended from legal practice.
Through the pre-action discovery application in 2021 by 22 inmates who were also represented by Mr Ravi, it was revealed that 13 inmates out of the 22 inmates had their correspondence — which included legal advice — forwarded to AGC.
The current application by the 13 prisoners represented by Mr Ong Ying Ping was dismissed by the High Court last July with nominal damages of S$10 awarded to the prisoners. The AGC is represented by Senior Counsel Tan Chee Meng from WongPartnership LLP.
At the hearing on Friday (20 Jan), where the 13 prisoners appeared before the Court of Appeal via Zoom, the Chief Justice, Sundaresh Menon, sought further information from the AGC with regard to the correspondence.
- Were the 68 letters that were copied and forwarded requested by AGC?
- If the letters had not been requested by AGC, were they sent by SPS for some other purpose, and if so, what was that purpose?
- Did officers at the AGC who were involved in court proceedings concerning any of the 13 prisoners request that the documents be provided, and if so why, and did they see the documents prior to the proceedings?
The AGC is given a month to collect and submit the necessary affidavits containing the information that has been asked of them.
Following the submission of the required documents, both parties have three weeks to agree on a table listing all this information for the judges.
The next hearing will not be held before 8 April 2023.
None of the 12 death row prisoners can be executed before then.
AGC had previously denied having any correspondence forwarded to them
In a Facebook post on Saturday (21 Jan), Mr Ravi wrote that it is very troubling that Deputy Public Prosecutor Wong Woon Kwong and DPP Francis Ng, who was representing AGC in the complaint by Gobi and Datchinamurthy, denied AGC having been forwarded any correspondence by SPS.
AGC’s response which has been recorded in the judgement of the Court of Appeal delivered in July 2020, states:
“In response, the AGC denied that the SPS had copied any correspondence between inmates and their lawyers or forwarded it to the AGC. Their position in relation to the appellants’ correspondence with their families,’” (At para 31 of the judgement)
Mr Ravi said that the Chief Justice needs to investigate this matter, and both Senior Counsel Wong and Senior Counsel Ng need to account for this.
“The opposition needs to question this as well as to why AGC did not inform the court as early as June 2020 and by accident I found out in Sept 2020 that what they informed the court earlier was not true,” said Mr Ravi.
Mr Ravi also noted in a separate Facebook post that he was imposed with a penalty of S$10,000 in relation to the application he had previously made on behalf of the 13 prisoners.
“Here I am being persecuted by the state with flurry of complaints by AG to the Law Society and I’m already suspended.”
“What we fail to understand is that if I had not taken out Syed Suhail’s stay application despite alot of pressures exerted on me, we would not have discovered that Singapore Prisons have been forwarding to AGC privileged communications between the inmates and their lawyers .”
“The 13 inmates’ appeal was heard yesterday. What if the 13 have been executed? They were supposed to be executed in 2019/2020.” asked Mr Ravi.
