By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Jun 7 2001 (IPS)

Almost three months after police killed seven men, Jamaica’s Minister of National Security and Justice Keith Knight is urging a “speedy ruling” from the Director of Public Prosecutions following the completion of investigations into the incident.

The public prosecutor’s office this week confirmed it had received documents from the Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI), which handles investigations into all shootings, deaths, and corruption allegations involving members of the Jamaican Constabulary Force.

There was no immediate indication, however, as to when Director of Public Prosecutions Kent Pantry would issue a ruling about whether any policemen involved in the killings will face criminal charges.

A spokesperson for the local human rights group Jamaicans for Justice said the March 14 incident, dubbed the ‘Braeton Seven Killings’, was helping to change attitudes toward police killings of suspected criminals. In a nation where many deaths are caused by reprisals and gang warfare, such “extrajudicial ” killings often have been seen as swift and effective justice. In the past year, however, the coroner has openly advocated the criminal prosecution of police deemed responsible for wrongful deaths.

The human rights group Amnesty International condemned the killings and sent Danish pathologist Peter Leth to observe the autopsies. Leth concluded that members of the Crime Management Unit had executed the men.

The seven young men, all aged between 15 and 22, were slain in an alleged shoot-out on March 14, in the town of Braeton, about 21 kilometres southeast of the capital.

Delays in the investigation, BSI Superintendent Maurice Goodgame said, were due to the reluctance of potential witnesses to give statements.

Goodgame said media reports and the interventions of human rights groups made the collection of public statements more difficult. Knight, an attorney by profession, echoed those concerns in a recent radio broadcast.

Speaking on a popular talk show, Knight said that Amnesty’s public presentation of an autopsy report, coupled with other calls for an independent enquiry and intense media interest, could compromise the collection of statements and the outcome of investigations.

But in a high-profile case involving allegations of criminal misconduct by police, potential witnesses were said to fear for their rights.

Yvonne McCalla Sobers, convenor of the group Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), said the group had advised potential witnesses to make sure a lawyer accompanied them, in an effort to protect individual rights. Michael Lorne, a FAST member and attorney, added that the organisation had assisted in collecting statements by contacting witnesses.

Goodgame disagreed, asserting that witnesses had been willing to step forward prior to FAST’s intervention.

Meanwhile, Amnesty made good last week on threats to go international with its concerns about human rights violations in Jamaica, when it released its 2001 global report. The document highlighted “apparent extrajudicial killings”, ill treatment of suspects in police custody, and allegations of torture and illegal arrests, searches, and detentions.

The report described Jamaica as “a nation torn by fierce gang turf wars” and used by Colombian cocaine cartels as a transshipment base. It pointed to last year’s killings of 840 people, including 12 police officers, by criminal elements and to at least 140 police killings – often in what it described as “disputed conditions”.

In April, Pierre Sané, Amnesty’s secretary general, said he would take Jamaica’s human rights problem to the international community in an effort to force the Percival Patterson administration to address its record.

Piers Bannister, Caribbean and Latin America researcher at Amnesty, said the organisation is now writing to the governments of its 150-country network, informing them of the situation in Jamaica.

An 89-page report detailing the country’s problems is also being circulated and two Amnesty staffers have been assigned to follow up with the UN and diplomatic communities, he said.

Bannister said that although Amnesty acknowledged the level of fear in the society, human rights violations could not be overlooked.

Nevertheless, the human rights watchdog saluted the Jamaican coroner’s office for its findings in the 1999 killing of Patrick Genius, who died under disputed circumstances. The human rights watchdog noted that the country has made the “first step to ensuring that his killing is investigated in accordance with international standards”.

Almost a year after Genius’ death, the coroner ruled that all the policemen involved in the matter should be held criminally responsible.

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