The Chamber of Advocates yesterday said it was dismayed that documents had been removed from the Law Courts in breech of legal procedure.

The chamber said it had no option but to condemn these actions which could weaken the public’s faith in the security and integrity of the judicial process.

It called on civil servants to scrupulously follow legal procedure even though they may face political pressures.

The chamber called on the director-general at the Law Courts to explain what happened and to guarantee it would not happen again.

Meanwhile, the director-general of the Law Courts rebutted claims made by the Chamber of Advocates.

He said it is rather surprising that in the first sentence, the chamber states that the court files were removed from the court archives against legal practice, when in the same statement, the chamber calls on the director-general to explain what exactly happened and to ensure that whatever it was will not happen again.

The director-general said the chamber’s statement is contradictory, because if it does not know exactly what happened, then it cannot possibly express its view on the same matter.

What did happen is that the parliamentary secretary within the Justice Ministry wanted to investigate the practical effects of Article 166A that was recently introduced into the Code of Organisation and Civil Procedure, said the director-general.

As a result, the court director had asked the court registrar to authorise him to have access to some files that were relevant to the investigation. The registrar had in turn authorised the director to extract the files in accordance with the law, for further examination by the parliamentary secretary.

The director-general went on to explain that when a lawyer made a request to have access to one of the named files, a court official brought it within a short period of time from the ministry and it was given to the lawyer immediately.