In keep­ing with its man­date of pro­vid­ing ac­cess to jus­tice, the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) will this week shift its op­er­a­tions to Ja­maica in or­der hear ev­i­dence from wit­ness­es in a case, who could not af­ford to jour­ney to the CCJ's Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters.The hear­ing will take place from to­day un­til Fri­day at the Ja­maica Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, lo­cat­ed in the coun­try's cap­i­tal Kingston.

A me­dia re­lease on the CCJ's Web site stat­ed: "The Court ex­plored the use of video­con­fer­enc­ing tech­nol­o­gy to take the ev­i­dence of the wit­ness­es but af­ter con­sult­ing with at­tor­neys it was de­cid­ed that the ev­i­dence should be giv­en in per­son and for this pur­pose the Court will sit in Ja­maica to hear the ev­i­dence of the wit­ness­es for the claimant and the in­ter­ven­er."The case be­ing heard by the sev­en ap­pel­late judges is that of Ja­maican na­tion­al Shanique Myrie who is su­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos.

In her law­suit, Myrie al­leges that when she trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos in March 2011 she was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against be­cause of her na­tion­al­i­ty, sub­ject­ed to a body cav­i­ty search, de­tained overnight in a cell and de­port­ed to Ja­maica the fol­low­ing day.Ja­maica was grant­ed leave to in­ter­vene in the case in Sep­tem­ber 2012.

The judges pre­sid­ing over the case are CCJ Pres­i­dent Sir Den­nis By­ron, and Jus­tices Rol­ston Nel­son, Adri­an Saun­ders, D�sir�e Bernard, Ja­cob Wit, David Hay­ton and Win­ston An­der­son.The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed that the CCJ would be pay­ing for the costs of the spe­cial sit­ting in­clud­ing air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion. The Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing the tem­po­rary lo­ca­tion, the re­lease said.