The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) said it has tak­en note of a re­port yes­ter­day of the ex­is­tence of a video record­ing of the ini­tial ar­rest of mur­der sus­pect An­drew Mor­ris which de­scribes his bru­tal in­ter­ro­ga­tion by heav­i­ly armed mem­bers of SORT who kicked him over his head and body while he lay on the ground, with one of­fi­cer strik­ing him on his back with a flat ob­ject.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it al­so not­ed an au­top­sy re­port pre­pared by Prof. Hu­bert Dais­ley who record­ed that “there were mul­ti­ple in­juries of blunt force trau­ma cov­er­ing most of the an­te­ri­or chest wall, the ab­domen and pos­te­ri­or chest/back, both up­per limbs and low­er limbs.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion said, “Prof. Dais­ley is said to have con­clud­ed that Mr. Mor­ris died from se­vere blunt force trau­ma to his chest, ab­domen, limbs and skull”, and that the in­juries sus­tained to his skull were fa­tal. These re­ports put in­to ques­tion the ac­cu­ra­cy of the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by the po­lice for Mr. Mor­ris’ death in po­lice cus­tody, that he fell off a chair, and give rise to the ob­vi­ous need for the in­sti­tu­tion of a prompt, thor­ough and in­de­pen­dent crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pos­si­ble homi­cide of Mr. Mor­ris.”

Tthe as­so­ci­a­tion said these re­ports al­so give rise to con­cern over the cir­cum­stances in which Joel Bal­con al­so met his death in po­lice cus­tody.

The state­ment said: “The as­so­ci­a­tion has not­ed the in­volve­ment of for­eign po­lice per­son­nel in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the DSS fi­as­co. Seek­ing out­side help in those cir­cum­stances was no doubt ap­pro­pri­ate giv­en the al­leged in­volve­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers in the scheme.”

It said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of Mor­ris al­so call for out­side, re­gion­al as­sis­tance in or­der that any con­cerns of a cov­er up may be avoid­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to do all with­in the re­mit of their re­spec­tive of­fices to en­sure that a thor­ough and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is prompt­ly car­ried out in­to the deaths of Mor­ris and Bal­con.