INQUIRY DEMANDED

A full official inquiry is required into the reported murder of Carrera Island prisoner, Ian Allen, whose body was found in waters off Carenage on Thursday, weighted down by a stone, feet bound and a bag over his head, three days after an alert that he had escaped from the prison. There must be no cover up.  While we point no accusing fingers  at any individual or group, nonetheless the authorities at Carrera, indeed the Prisons Administration must explain how a prisoner could have been removed from a locked cell, taken out of the prison bound and weighted and thrown into the sea, without prison officers on duty being aware of what was transpiring.

Carrera Prison is a maximum security prison, where hardened criminals and/or persons convicted of particularly severe crimes are detained.  Escape has long been proclaimed as difficult, and while there have been instances of prisoners escaping, for example Saywell Gordon in the 1950s, relatively few have attempted it.  In turn, security, as the type of prison suggests, is tight.  Added to this are reports of the waters between Carrera and Trinidad being shark-infested. Was there some measure of complicity, not only in the unlawful killing of Ian Allen, but in the disposal of his body?  Who are those who were a part of this complicity? Who are the persons  who conspired to kill Allen and seek to conceal the evidence of his murder?  How far did the tentacles reach? 

In addition, when was he taken from his cell? Was he sharing the cell? If so, did fellow prisoners not observe that something  was amiss? If he was the lone occupant of the cell, were there cells on either side of his, and/or on the opposite side? Were there not mandatory checks carried out by prison warders at some stage during the night? Something is rotten in the State of Carrera’s Denmark. Meanwhile, were Allen’s fellow Carrera inmates interviewed by  the authorities at the island-prison before and/or following on the alert being sounded when he was not seen on Monday morning in his cell, and the advice given that he had escaped and was believed to be armed and dangerous?

Allen, 30, had been committed to Carrera and was serving a sentence of eight years hard labour after he was found guilty by a court of law of unlawful killing. At Carrera, persons unknown, sentenced Allen to death, carried out the grim execution by reportedly dumping his weighted body into the sea and possibly hoping that after he had drowned fishes would nibble away at his body and it would never be found. Newsday demands the fullest possible investigation into Allen’s death.  Full assurance must be given to prisoners, who may have either witnessed Allen’s body being borne to the point where it was dumped into the sea, or when it was actually thrown into the waters, that their identities would be protected. A court of law in this country determined, on the basis of evidence adduced at Allen’s trial, that he was guilty of  unlawful killing, not of murder. And although he was found guilty of a heinous crime his sentence was set by the court, and only a Court of Appeal could have varied the sentence, and not those who conspired to drown him. His killers must be brought to justice.