18 May 2004

Dr Keith Mitchell

Prime Minister

Botanical Gardens

St Georges

GRENADA, West Indies

Dear Mr Prime Minister

Thank you for your recent hospitality when I visited your beautiful island as a member of the South African Soccer World Cup Bid 2010 delegation. We are basking in our success and are deeply grateful to your country and all those who supported us and have enabled us to have this wonderful opportunity to assist in the development of our people and our country through sport.

But I write to you on another pressing matter, the situation of the Grenada 17. As I suggested in my speech in the Botanical Gardens ceremony, I appeal to you to consider clemency, for the sake of reconciliation, for the sake of magnanimity which is the stuff of greatness and for the sake of people who have been incarcerated for twenty one long years. To grant clemency would go a long way to healing wounds that continue to fester.

In South Africa former President Mandela and former President de Klerk – at one time political opposites, the jailed and the jailor – are now together icons, an example to the world. Strength is often too easily associated with weapons, power and jackboots. It is moral strength that is unassailable.

It was a great pleasure to meet you and your colleagues. Thank you for what your country has done for us.

God bless you

+Desmond M Tutu Archbishop Emeritus