Twen­ty-six years af­ter he was jailed for mur­der­ing then prime min­is­ter and col­league, Mau­rice Bish­op, the deputy prime min­is­ter of the short-lived Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment (PRG), Bernard Coard walked to free­dom af­ter Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Car­lyle Glean Sr ac­cept­ed the ad­vice to re­mit the re­main­der of his sen­tence. Coard, 65, along with 13 oth­er pris­on­ers, in­clud­ing Dave Bartholomew, Cal­lis­tus Bernard, Leon Corn­wall, Liam James, and Ewaart Layne, for­mer mem­bers of the now de­funct Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army (PRA), walked through the gates of the Rich­mond Hill prison just be­fore mid­day yes­ter­day. He told re­porters that he would be mak­ing plans to vis­it Ja­maica, where his wife, Phylis, has been since March 2000 af­ter she was giv­en per­mis­sion to trav­el to that Caribbean coun­try be­cause of se­vere health prob­lems.

The Coards were part of the so-called "Grena­da 17" con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing the left wing prime min­is­ter and some mem­bers of his cab­i­net in a palace coup in 1983. "I will be spend­ing as lit­tle time as pos­si­ble here. My wife is not well. Her health is not very good. I will join her in Ja­maica as soon as I can se­cure a pass­port. I will be based there," a clean shaved Coard, wear­ing a dark suit told re­porters. "I will con­tin­ue to make my con­tri­bu­tion to Grena­da as long as it is en­tire­ly in a non- po­lit­i­cal, non par­ti­san way, for ob­vi­ous rea­sons." A Grena­da gov­ern­ment state­ment on Fri­day said that the Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the Pre­rog­a­tive of Mer­cy, Karl I Hood, had ad­vised the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al pur­suant of the rel­e­vant laws "to re­mit the re­main­der of the sen­tences of 14 prison in­mates and there­by ef­fect their re­lease from in­car­cer­a­tion." The state­ment said that the re­view of the pris­on­ers' sen­tences was in keep­ing with a court or­der, aris­ing out of the re-sen­tenc­ing hear­ing in June 2007 that their sen­tences to be re­viewed with­in two years.

The oth­ers who have ben­e­fit­ed from the ear­ly re­lease are for­mer mo­bil­i­sa­tion min­is­ter in the PRG, Sel­wyn Stra­chan, Win­ston An­toine, Michael Jef­frey, Michael Loui­son, Ke­ston Mc Queen, Ms Hi­lary Ogilvie, Joseph Paul and Kevin Tay­lor. "Their re­lease is based not on sub­jec­tive fac­tors but ob­jec­tive fac­tors: their con­duct, their at­ti­tude, their in­dus­try in prison, their work, their con­tri­bu­tion to de­vel­op­ment in prison and oth­er pris­on­ers," said Rug­gles Fer­gu­son, an at­tor­ney for the for­mer pris­on­ers. "What you are see­ing here to­day is the re­sult of in­sti­tu­tions work­ing, not the ar­bi­trary whims and fan­cies of politi­cians," Fer­gu­son told the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC).

Three of the con­vict­ed peo­ple–Lester Red­head, Christo­pher Stroude and Ce­cil Prime –were re­leased in 2007 af­ter High Court Judge Fran­cis Belle ruled that they had spent enough time in jail for their roles in the 1983 killings. Jus­tice Belle had al­so ruled that ten oth­er con­vict­ed men, in­clud­ing Coard, would serve 40 years hard labour on their mur­der con­vic­tions, clear­ing the way for them to be freed with­in three years. The new court sen­tenc­ing fol­lowed a rul­ing by the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil, the is­land's high­est court, that over­turned the death sen­tences that had orig­i­nal­ly been im­posed on the for­mer gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary of­fi­cers. (CMC)

Rawle Ti­tus

St George's, Grena­da