GEORGTOWN, Guyana, CMC – A senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wednesday, admitted that the extradition treaty between Guyana and the United States does not provide for “conditioning” extraditions based on assurances concerning re-extradition to a third country.
Permanent Secretary Sharon Roopchand-Edwards disclosed as she testified in the ongoing extradition matter involving the Opposition Leader, Azruddin Mohamed, and his businessman father, Nazar “Shell” Mohamed.
The Mohameds are challenging their extradition to the United States, where they are wanted on several fraud-related charges. They were indicted in the United States in October 2025 on charges including wire/mail fraud, money laundering, and bribery linked to a US$50 million gold smuggling and tax evasion scheme. They were arrested in Guyana in October 2025 following a US extradition request, which remains ongoing.
The committal proceedings are currently before Principal Magistrate Judy Latchman, who received the Authority To Proceed (ATP) on October 30, 2025, in keeping with Section 12 of the Fugitive Offenders Act.
After receiving the authority, the magistrate issued the arrest warrants on October 31 for the two Mohameds.
Under cross-examination by defence attorney Roysdale Forde, one of the lawyers representing the Mohameds, Roopchand-Edwards, was shown a response to the Foreign Ministry’s note verbale seeking “assurances” that the Mohameds would not be re-extradited to third countries.
She told the court that the US correspondence noted that the treaty did not contain a “basis for conditioning extraditions” based on assurance about re-extradition.
She had earlier told the court that the Guyana government sought an “assurance” from the United States that the Mohameds would not be extradited to a third country and that, in her layman’s understanding, the words “assurances” and “undertaking” were the same.
“In my mind, undertakings and assurances are the same,” she said, noting that the assurances were sought in a note verbale to the US on December 3, 2025.
But the US prosecutor, Jamaican attorney Herbert McKenzie, objected to that line of questioning, contending it was merely about the choice of words.
“In the context of what we are doing, it’s more of the same thing. It’s all semantics in the same way, we’re semantically dancing around whether they are extradition documents or extradition documents,” McKenzie said.
However, Forde argued that an assurance and an undertaking were two “completely different things,” explaining that an assurance related to extradition is a request made by the Guyana government in keeping with the US-UK extradition treaty, to which the US would reply.
On the other hand, the treaty did not provide for the undertaking that the Guyana government was asking for.
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