Sto­ries by Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Six po­lice of­fi­cers on tri­al for mur­der­ing three friends from Moru­ga in 2011 will learn their fate next week.

At a hear­ing of the case at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing, de­fence at­tor­neys Is­rael Khan and Ul­ric Sker­ritt, rep­re­sent­ing Sgt Khem­raj Sa­hadeo and PCs Re­nal­do Re­viero, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Ju­man, An­to­nio Ra­madin, closed their case.

Pros­e­cu­tors and the men’s de­fence team are ex­pect­ed to present their clos­ing ad­dress­es to the 12-mem­ber ju­ry lat­er this week.

High Court Judge Car­la Brown-An­toine will then take three days next week to sum­marise the ev­i­dence and le­gal is­sues in the case to the ju­rors be­fore they are al­lowed to de­lib­er­ate over the of­fi­cers’ guilt or in­no­cence.

Last week, all the ac­cused ex­cept Ra­madin de­clined to tes­ti­fy or call wit­ness­es in their de­fence. Ra­madin elect­ed to stay silent but called on Cpl Ster­ling Lee to tes­ti­fy.

Lee, who is as­signed to St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion, claimed that ear­li­er this year, WPC Nicole Clement, who was ini­tial­ly charged along­side the of­fi­cers be­fore be­ing made a State wit­ness, sub­mit­ted two state­ments that he de­liv­ered to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

In one state­ment, which was re­ferred to by the of­fi­cers’ lawyer Is­rael Khan, SC, when he sought to ques­tion Clement, she es­sen­tial­ly re­cant­ed her pre­vi­ous claims which im­pli­cat­ed her for­mer col­leagues for the triple mur­der. Clement claimed to be the “mas­ter­mind” and con­tend­ed that she threat­ened her col­leagues in­to ex­e­cut­ing two of the friends who al­leged­ly sur­vived the ini­tial shoot­ing on the car they were trav­el­ling in.

In the oth­er state­ment, Clement in­di­cat­ed that she was no longer will­ing to tes­ti­fy against her for­mer col­leagues as ini­tial­ly agreed un­der her plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Khan and Sker­ritt pre­sent­ed in­di­vid­ual bio-so­cial re­ports from the T&T Prison Ser­vice for their clients. The re­ports de­tailed the ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions which the of­fi­cers ob­tained and the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes they par­tic­i­pat­ed in while on re­mand await­ing tri­al.

The re­ports al­so stat­ed that none of the of­fi­cers com­mit­ted any dis­ci­pli­nary in­frac­tions while re­mand­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.

The of­fi­cers are al­leged to have mur­dered Abi­gail John­son, Ker­ron Ec­cles, and Alana Dun­can at the cor­ner of Rochard Dou­glas Road and Gun­ness Trace, Bar­rack­pore, on Ju­ly 22, 2011.

In his open­ing ad­dress, lead pros­e­cu­tor Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, con­tend­ed that the of­fi­cers were look­ing for Dun­can’s com­mon-law hus­band, Shum­ba James. James tes­ti­fied ear­li­er in the tri­al that he went with two friends while the trio fol­lowed in the car he was known to have used.

Clement was deemed a hos­tile wit­ness af­ter she re­fused to tes­ti­fy due to al­leged “safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns”. Her tes­ti­mo­ny at the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, in which she claimed that two of the friends sur­vived the ini­tial bar­rage of gun­shots on their ve­hi­cle but were ex­e­cut­ed at a sec­ond lo­ca­tion, was read to the ju­ry.

Clement claimed Ec­cles and one of the women sur­vived the ini­tial vol­ley of gun­shots. She said her col­leagues took the duo to a dirt track off the M2 Ring Road in Wood­land where they were ex­e­cut­ed.

She ad­mit­ted that af­ter the shoot­ing she and her col­leagues were placed on sev­en days’ leave and said dur­ing the pe­ri­od, they held sev­er­al clan­des­tine meet­ings dur­ing which they sought to en­sure their re­ports on the shoot­ing were con­sis­tent.

The meet­ings were held at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do Hill and the ini­tial crime scene in Bar­rack­pore.

“That is the nor­mal po­lice cul­ture when things like this hap­pen . . . Every­one sticks to­geth­er and writes the same re­port . . . One squad. One song,” she said.

Clement claimed one of her col­leagues pro­vid­ed the oth­ers with in­for­ma­tion on the progress of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that was leaked to him.

“He said that they (in­ves­ti­ga­tors) would tar­get me as I was the weak link,” she said.

She al­so claimed that two of her col­leagues wrote her re­port on the shoot­ing and she just signed it de­spite know­ing it was er­ro­neous.

“That is the way we were trained,” she said.

The of­fi­cers are al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aris­sa Ma­haraj. The State is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Elaine Greene, Giselle Fer­gu­son-Heller and Katiesha Am­brose-Per­sads­ingh.