Acting Prime Minister Freundel Stuart (right) makes a point while Director of Public Prosecutions Charles Leacock (left) and training facilitator Paul Garlick look on during yesterday’s course.
New laws coming!
12/3/2008
By Shawn Cumberbatch
Government is promising introduction of new laws to deal firmly with “thugs” who threaten court witnesses with “personal liquidation”.
Acting Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, whose substantive post is Attorney-General and Minister of Home Affairs, said yesterday while he had no evidence of witness intimidation locally, discussions with regional counterparts currently grappling with the problem have convinced him it could be a major threat “soon rather than later”.
He raised the concern with the island’s prosecutors, headed by Director of Public Prosecutions Charles Leacock Q.C., during a training seminar for them at the Frank Walcott Building. Stuart told them he had brought the issue to their attention because if it was not dealt with, they too could be could face serious threats.
“We cannot compromise on this issue because if we show weakness or a lack of resolve in it and we surrender to these thugs it’s only a question of time before they say ‘well okay if we win on that front let’s go the next step, let us start threatening prosecutors next’. So halt has to be called somewhere and we have to show an iron determination in dealing with the issue of witness protection,” he warned.
“And I want to give you the assurance ... that if this issue rears its ugly head in Barbados and is drawn to my attention it will be swiftly dealt with at the legislative level because I am not going to live in a society, and I am not going to ask the people in Barbados to live in a society, where men can do wrong and then by these tactics of intimidation paper over and manicure their wrongs in such a way that they survive to repeat these wrongs and to keep a society in a permanent state of tension,” he added.
The official said “based on what I am hearing from my colleagues across the region I will not be surprised if soon rather than later we start to hear rumblings around here on that question, and it will be confronted fearlessly”.
“I have been attending national security meetings across the Caribbean ever since I became Attorney-General and a constant theme at these meetings is the fact that we have now reached the stage in this region where the issue of witness protection has to be put firmly on our agenda. This issue is being discussed by Attorneys-General across the region and I am sure that in the not too distant future I might have to give very serious attention to dealing with the issue here in Barbados,” according to him.
“Now I am not saying this because there is available to me any evidence of witness intimidation here ... and that’s why it is not a pressing agenda item here in Barbados, but in other parts of the Caribbean it has been an issue and the challenge facing prosecutors and of course a possible impediment to their work is going to be the reluctance of witnesses to come forward and to give evidence if they think that in so doing they are exposing either themselves or their loved ones to the threat of personal liquidation,” the Acting Prime Minister noted.
He said indicators were than “when the witnesses themselves show a certain amount of courage and determination these thugs turn their attention to families, to children, and it is at that point that the witness is necessarily weakened”.
“So if prosecutors are to be able to do their job and to pursue justice to its logical conclusion they have to have available to them the evidence of witnesses and you are only going to have available to you the evidence of witnesses if witnesses feel safe. And we in this country, committed as we are to the rule of law will do everything to ensure that the aims of justice are not undermined by acts, subtle or overt, designed to intimidate those who want to assist the justice system in bringing those persons who commit crimes to justice and ensuring that they are fairly prosecuted,” Stuart stated.
That was why, he added, prosecutors had to ensure “that the man in the dock gets no sense that he is being treated other than fairly” to ensure he did not resort “or want to resort to tactics up to now unfamiliar to us, but tactics which are now rearing their heads in other parts of the Caribbean”.
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