Language barrier but tension clearly understood

A mix of languages and humidity in a packed courtroom add to the strain between lawyers

EVER SINCE a new speaker system was installed in courtroom number five earlier this week, it has become clear that poor sound isn’t the only barrier to communication.

Some of the witnesses appear not to understand quite a lot of what is being said in court.

The country’s lingua franca is Mauritian Creole, which is heavily influenced by French.

Children learn English and French – the languages of the two former colonisers – from an early age and both are commonly used in daily life across the island.

The biggest newspapers and other media, for example, are in French, but the courts system, which borrows a lot from the UK model, operates mainly through English.

So far the only person to have requested an interpreter at his side is Avinash Treebhoowoon, one of the accused men.

Regularly, however, witnesses need help with phrases used by barristers. Sometimes misunderstandings are easily overcome, but from time to time tenses get mixed up during detailed technical exchanges or questions elicit blank stares.

At one point, a barrister appeared to need a colleague’s prompting to recall the word “camera”.

Not that any interpreters would have been needed to pick up on the rising tension between the two sets of lawyers. It had been simmering for three days and yesterday it finally rose to the surface. The row seemed to come out of the blue.

The court was hearing from Sgt Govinder Ramasawmy, a quietly spoken officer, as he detailed each of the instructions he had given to a police photographer and draughtsman at the Legends Hotel in the days after Michaela McAreavey’s killing.

He recalled finding packets of biscuits in a drawer and moving them to the top of the same chest of drawers to give the photographer a view of the label.

The discussion about the biscuits was proceeding steadily when defence counsel Sanjeev Teeluckdharry shifted his line of questioning to a list of personal belongings that Sgt Ramasawmy had returned to John McAreavey a few days after the killing.

The list included a laptop, two iPhones, a sex-guide book and other belongings.

Teeluckdharry asked whether an effort had been made by police to examine the contents of the phones and the websites accessed from the laptop. Did phones not contain messages and pictures that could be important, he asked.

Prosecution counsel Mehdi Manrakhan immediately rose to his feet and objected, setting off a bitter exchange with his opposite number.

Judge Prithviraj Fecknah intervened and called them to order. “Gentlemen, get up now. I thought we had sorted this out. I thought I made it clear that these kinds of personal exchanges will not be tolerated,” he admonished gravely.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Under questioning from Teeluckdharry, the police officer said he had not looked through the book.

The defence then twice pressed him about what may have been in it. Manrakhan leapt to his feet and twice objected angrily, pointing out that the witness had already said he had not looked through the book.

“I object in the strongest possible terms,” Manrakhan said as his colleagues slammed papers on the benches.

Teeluckdharry said he was moving towards “the crux of the defence’s case”, but the judge was not impressed.

“I can see where you are going with this,” he told the defence lawyer. “I think you are asking the wrong witness.”

The judge upheld the objections.

It was awfully humid in the packed courtroom in Port Louis yesterday. With barristers’ tempers fraying and the atmosphere growing oppressive, the judge adjourned for a while.

Mark Harte, Michaela’s brother, rested his temples on his hands and stared at the floor.