(Jamaica Observer) NASSAU, Bahamas – The Grand Bahamas Human Rights Association (GBHRA) has criticized the Bahamas government over the continued detention of a Jamaican “for the better part of a decade”.
The GBHRA said that it was also appalled at the response given by Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell to the case of Matthew Sewell, “an innocent Jamaican man incarcerated in The Bahamas for the better part of a decade.
“The last stage of Sewell’s harrowing ordeal, at the hands of …(the ) Immigration Department, was indeed the result of an error: even after he was declared innocent of all charges by the courts, this poor man continued to be held for another year under an article of the Immigration Act which does not even exist.
“That a man could be held in detention for so long over a mere slip of the pen – with government lawyers fighting tooth and nail to keep him there, even after the error came to light – is indicative of the troubling level of disregard for human liberty displayed by the authorities in The Bahamas today,” the GBHRA said in a statement.