Trinidad lawyer optimistic as:

WEDNESDAY will be an important day in the life of three of the 17 persons convicted for the murders of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and members of his Cabinet in 1983.

That’s the day when Justice Kenneth Benjamin, presiding in the Grenada High Court, will decide if these three persons should be released or not.

Justice Benjamin postponed his judgment on two occasions already, the last being on Thursday of this week. He wanted more time to complete his judgment. On the last two occasions, an anxious Trinidad lawyer Keith Scotland flew to the Caribbean island for the judgment.

The three prisoners are Cosmos Richardson, Vincent Joseph, and Andy Mitchell.

They were among those referred to as the “Grenada 17” for their role in the killings of former Grenada leader Maurice Bishop and ten others. Sixteen of the 17, who were convicted for killing Bishop in a 1983 coup that led to a United States invasion, are still in jail at Richmond Hill Prison some 23 years after the assassination. The only person to be released was Phyllis Coard who was sent back to her native Jamaica due to health problems.

Yesterday, Scotland said he was very anxious about this judgment. “I cannot wait, it is Wednesday. I am very optimistic,” the Trinidad lawyer added. Could this be deja vu, only time will tell.

In 2002, The Grenada High Court ruled that Richardson, Joseph, and Mitchell should be freed because each received more than one consecutive 15-year sentence for manslaughter - an action it said amounted to multiple sentences for the same crime. Nine months later, the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal overturned the decision. The three prisoners appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but that appeal will be heard later this year. In the meantime, Scotland filed another action seeking the release of his three clients.

One of the prisoners, Richardson, said he sill hasn’t given up. “I have hopes for the future,” he said, stressing, “I am not a criminal. I was a foot soldier. If a foot soldier gets an order, he has to carry it out. And the law is supposed to protect him.”

Twenty-three years later, some details of the coup remain unclear, including the number of Grenadians killed and the whereabouts of Bishop’s body. The US government puts the death toll at 45 Grenadians, 24 Cubans and 19 Americans.

Bishop’s People’s Revolutionary Army seized control of Grenada in a bloodless coup in October 1979, forcing the then Prime Minister to flee the country. Bishop was close to the Cuban President Fidel Castro.