Maurice Bishop killers have cancer

Two of Grenada’s  16 political prisoners, who took part in the murders of  Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, members of his Cabinet and supporters 22 years ago, are suffering from acute prostate cancer. They are Colville Mc Barnett and John Ventour. However, the two and the 14 others at Richmond Hill Prison firmly believe that no government will ever pardon them and that their freedom will have to come from the court.
 
This, said a recent visitor of the men, they hold true, in spite of Monday’s ruling by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Court of Appeal, which overturned a decision by Justice Kenneth Benjamin that the prisoners be set free immediately. Coard and his men have given instructions to their attorneys to challenge the Court of Appeal’s decision before the Privy Council. Both Mc Barnett and Ventour  have lost a lot of weight. One is about 90 pounds and the other about 105.  Their health was described as “grave” by the visitor.

Phyllis Coard,  who was also jailed with her husband,  Bernard Coard —  the leader of the group of soldiers of the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) that killed Bishop, was allowed to leave her Richmond Hill Prison in 2000 and travel to the USA for medical treatment. She was granted a respite under section 72:1 of Grenada Constitution. Phyllis Coard was diagnosed with colon cancer. She is now in Jamaica, her homeland. Derick Sylvester, one of the lawyers who recently represented the 16 men at the Court of Appeal hearing, acknowledged Mc Barnett and Ventour’s serious illness.

He said, last year they had made an application before the Court of Appeal to grant bail to Mc Barnett and Ventour, so that they could receive proper medical treatment. But the court explained that it did not have the authority to do so. In spite of the strike by attorneys in Grenada who are  protesting government’s announcement to appoint Jamaican attorney Hugh Wildman as Attorney-General of Grenada, Sylvester said they would still pursue Coard’s appeal. He  said  they hope to seek special leave from the Court of Appeal when it sits in Grenada on February 28, to petition the Privy Council. If however  lawyers in Grenada were still protesting at that time, they would make their application to the court when it sits in another island through attorneys there.