Pe­ter and Muri­um Green, the British cou­ple who were vic­tims of a bru­tal cut­lass at­tack at their home in To­ba­go in Au­gust 2009, claim they have re­ceived death threats. In an in­ter­view with the BBC which was aired on Mon­day, Pe­ter Green, the more out­spo­ken of the two, said the threat came via an e-mail in which they were warned that they would be shot if they ever re­turned to the is­land. "I've made a re­port to the po­lice but no­body takes any no­tice of us and I have a fear of re­turn­ing," he said. Green said he had con­sid­ered "just draw­ing a line un­der it and writ­ing it off," but he and his wife had de­cid­ed to re­turn to To­ba­go to tes­ti­fy against the man ac­cused of at­tack­ing them. He told the BBC: "My fam­i­ly is beg­ging me not to go back...My sis­ter who lives in Cana­da is beg­ging me not to go back and I can un­der­stand my fears but you know, if I don't go back, we'll nev­er draw a line un­der­neath this.

"Every­time I open my eyes in the morn­ing, I've got my vi­sion prob­lem," he said. "When I try to walk to the bath­room, I have my leg prob­lem...My left leg doesn't do what my brain is try­ing to tell it to do and I live with this con­stant re­minder that I am dis­abled." In the in­ter­view, Green com­plained that since the at­tack, he and his wife had been try­ing to get help from the T&T Gov­ern­ment but had been un­suc­cess­ful. "They've not helped us in any way what­so­ev­er," he said. "In fact, it has be­come some­what of an ar­gu­ment across the sea be­tween us and the THA-which is the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly-and the Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don." Green said his row with the T&T au­thor­i­ties was about com­pen­sa­tion. He said un­der the T&T com­pen­sa­tion scheme, they should get £2,500 each but he claimed that "con­sid­er­ing what we need, that won't help us very much in the fu­ture." He said he would need a wheel­chair and since they lived up­stairs of an apart­ment block, he would al­so need a chair­lift and oth­er items.

He com­plained: "T&T has giv­en us a run-around and now they're ac­cus­ing me of be­ing de­ceit­ful." Ac­cord­ing to Green, even the po­lice were ac­cus­ing them of be­ing de­ceit­ful be­cause of an e-mail they sent to the British High Com­mis­sion in Port-of-Spain, com­plain­ing that they were not be­ing in­formed of what was go­ing on with their court mat­ter. He said an of­fi­cer at the High Com­mis­sion picked up their case "and maybe gave a few kicks to the rear," so the T&T po­lice took of­fence.

The Greens have been get­ting con­sid­er­able me­dia at­ten­tion in re­cent weeks ever since they threat­ened to protest out­side the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don if the Gov­ern­ment failed to com­pen­sate them for med­ical ex­pens­es in­curred as a re­sult of the cut­lass at­tack. Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney has promised that the cou­ple would be paid com­pen­sa­tion un­der the Crim­i­nal In­juries Com­pen­sa­tion Act ear­ly this year. The cou­ple was bru­tal­ly hacked with a cut­lass by an in­trud­er who en­tered their house on an Au­gust af­ter­noon in 2009. The se­vere­ly in­jured cou­ple was ad­mit­ted to Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal where Muri­um un­der­went op­er­a­tions to re­build her shat­tered face.

Pe­ter spent two weeks in a med­ical­ly-in­duced co­ma to help re­duce the swelling on his brain. He had not been ex­pect­ed to sur­vive. When it was deemed safe, Muri­um was flown home to the UK to con­tin­ue her treat­ment, leav­ing be­hind her crit­i­cal­ly-ill hus­band. Pe­ter still has no feel­ing on the left side of his body and needs his wife's help with ba­sic tasks. He has to wear hear­ing aids and be­cause he suf­fers dou­ble vi­sion in his left eye, re­quires glass­es with one cloudy lens. Much of Muri­um's face is con­struct­ed from met­al plates and she has dif­fi­cul­ty eat­ing.