Global Issues
GRENADA: Coup Leader Calls on U.S. to 'Come Clean' on Bishop
For nearly three decades, Grenadians have wondered what happened to the body of their first left-wing prime minister, Maurice Bishop.
Now, two weeks after being given an early release from prison, Bishop's former deputy Bernard Coard has left no doubt that the United States is well aware of the location of the charismatic leader, whose short-lived People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) came to a bloody end in a palace coup engineered by Coard himself in October 1983.
Coard, appearing on a television programme Tuesday, made a direct appeal to the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, to bring closure to Grenada's bloody period that began in 1979 when Bishop and Coard and members of the then New Jewel Movement (NJM) overthrew the Eric Gairy government in the Caribbean's first successful coup.
'You are the new administration - you had no part in this,' Coard said, addressing Obama. 'You have an opportunity now to start the slate clean. What happened in the [Ronald] Reagan administration - don't let that hold you back. Make the effort, come clean.'
Bishop and several members of his cabinet were lined up against a wall and executed by soldiers of his own People's Revolutionary Army (PRA) at the height of a power struggle between himself and Coard.
His death in October 1983 resulted in a United States-led invasion of the island. The body of the former prime minister has never been recovered, despite pleas from his family and successive governments.
'I want to say to the new administration in America that there will be embarrassment over denying it all the time, trying to put the blame on the 17 knowing fully well you have it,' said Coard, who was one of the so-called 'Grenada 17' convicted in 1986 of Bishop's murder.
But U.S. pathologist Dr. Robert Jordan, who testified before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2006, insists that those who murdered Bishop used dynamite to destroy the body and make it unrecognisable after the October tragedy.
'They were dynamited, thrown into a pit, dynamited, burnt and buried,' said Dr. Jordan, who was among the witnesses who saw the remains of the Grenada leadership dug out from a hole at an army camp in the south of the island after U.S. Marines invaded on Oct. 25, l983.
'They were really banged up and cut up. What we saw were just pieces,' he told the commission at the time.
But in his television interview, Coard said that Washington should respect the people of Grenada by turning over the bodies of Bishop and the others killed during the 1983 incident.
He told Obama: 'You are not to blame. It happened by the previous American administration. You have an opportunity to in fact do the right thing. I am asking you to do the right thing.'
The 14-month-old Tillman Thomas government is hoping that 'ultimately this issue can be resolved', even as Bishop's mother, Alimenta, has repeatedly asked for his remains so she can give him a proper burial.
'The fact of the matter is that she lost her son and as far as we know, his remains have not been found, have not been presented to her or her family for a decent Christian burial,' said Finance Minister Nizam Burke, the government's spokesman.
'This is a legitimate concern that will continue, I think, to plague the family and something which ought to be addressed,' he added.
On Sep. 5, a Grenadian government statement said that the minister responsible for the Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, Karl I. Hood, had advised the Governor General Carlyle Glean Sr. '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.
Three of the convicted - 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 also ruled that 10 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, overturning the death sentences that had originally been imposed on the former government and military officers.
The Privy Council had ruled that the death sentences were unconstitutional and as a result this also invalidated the process by which those sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment.
'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 results of institutions working not the arbitrary whims and fancies of politicians,' he added.
Burke said that the government's focus now is on reconciliation.
'Government does not support or oppose the decision of the court. Whatever that decision is, that decision is made,' Burke said, noting that based on the response of ordinary Grenadians, it was quite clear that 'the people respect the decision of the court that has been made and the decision of the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy that has been exercised.'
'There has been no major uproar, as far as I can tell. There has been no major political backlash that I can point to. I believe the people are taking that in stride and hoping that from here it marks the beginning of the end of a bad chapter,' said Burke.
Coard has acknowledged that the four-year-old PRG government was comprised of people who were 'amateurs...arrogant and intolerant', and as a result 'all our mistakes came home to roost'.
In 1997, he wrote a paper entitled 'Reflections and Apologies' in which 'we apologised unreservedly to the Grenadian people'.
'A lot of good things happened in the Grenada revolution, the new international airport, people were being better educated. And so on. But we took moral and political responsibility for what happened. We did so many things that were wrong. And we've apologised.'
'We don't apportion blame. We take collective responsibility for everything that went wrong. We accept full moral and political responsibility for all of it. And I am still traumatised by it. It's not just a question of remorse. I've written 70 pages on this issue,' he added.
Now it seems the only material to end the book on the bloody history of Grenada may be found in the Obama White House.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service