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THE
GRENADIAN VOICE EDITORIAL SATURDAY
19 FEBRUARY 2005 Free
These People Once
again the people who were railroaded into prison more than 18 years ago
and
have now spent more than 21 years behind bars have been the victims of
a
travesty of justice which only Justice Benjamin seems to have
understood when
he ordered in March last year that the unlawful sentence for the
“remainder of
their natural live3s” be quashed and that they be brought before a
judge within
42 days for resentencing. For our
part, we are not interested in whether they should be in prison for the
rest of
their natural lives or not. Our
contention is that they should never have been convicted in the first
place and
we hope that their lawyers will attempt to and succeed in convincing
the Privy
Council that they were originally tried be an illegal, mercenary court,
and
yes, a “Yankee Court” whose own Appeal Court certified the trial court
as legal
in that it was a ‘court of convenience’! The
point is, as has been argued on this page before, that when our
Constitution
was restored for elections in December 1984 the OECS prime ministers
had no
authority to amend it, in effect, by refusing to allow the Bishop
Murder Trial
to be heard in the OECS Court. Clearly
they were acting on the instructions of the US Government which, in
those Cold
War years, was anxious to rid the country, the region and indeed the
world, of
these Communist upstarts whom they saw as a danger to their safety. And
they paid handsomely for this – but somehow the President of the Appeal
Court
did not get his last helping so he has never handed over the written
judgement
which he delivered on July 12, 1991 and Justice Brian Alleyne played
this down
in the judgment he delivered last week. It is
interesting to note that after the original appeal was dismissed on
July 12,
1991 the governor-general assented to a Constitutional Judicature
(Restoration)
Act on July 19 to come into effect on August 01. However, when an
appeal was
filed on July 29 there was a revocation the next day of the Restoration
Act
which was eventually brought into effect on August 15. Evidence
of the anxiety to get rid of the Communists can be drawn from the fact
that,
with seven other convicted criminal sentenced to hang being at the
prison, the
Government of the day started preparations to hang five of them the
following
week – no doubt to be followed by other batches. This is
recorded in the front page of The Grenadian Voice dated July 27, 1991
which is
reproduced on the front page this week. Subsequently,
a letter to the paper from one of the five confirmed that his was so
and that
the gallows, brought back from loan to St Vincent, had been set up and
was
being tested. It was this front page
article as well as commentary in the Personally Speaking column which
labelled
Minister Joan Purcell, who had responsibility for the Mercy Committee,
as The
Hanging Minister which caused the Government to have change of heart
and cancel
the hanging. We now
call on the Keith Mitchell administration to recognise the historical
facts and
free the 17 unfortunate people from his prison.
We also feel that he should come clean with the country on
the matter of
the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which is long
overdue and
which we suspect is being held back because he does not like what it
says. Leslie
Pierre Editor The
Grenadian Voice |