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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
Nassau, Bahamas - (GBHRA Statement) After nine years of false imprisonment by both Her Majesty's Prisons and the Department of Immigration, the Supreme Court of The Bahamas ordered that Jamaican Matthew Sewell be granted his freedom immediately.
In securing this tremendous victory, Sewell's attorney, GBHRA president Fred Smith, Q.C., urged the court to recognize that there is "No Guantanamo Bay" in The Bahamas, where individuals can be held in secret and outside the scope of the law.
He called on the Bahamas authorities to cease taking the law into their own hands and urged them to respect the fundamental rights of each and every individual – regardless of their nationality.
Specifically, Smith said, the Immigration Department cannot continue to act as "judge, jury and executioner" when it comes to those they detain, as the court is the only entity that can decide if a person is guilty of any offense under the Immigration Act.
Matthew Sewell was repeatedly detained in connection with a series of alleged and trumped up charges over the better part of the last decade. This included a trumped up murder and a house break-in which happened while he was already in prison.
All the allegations against him proved to be false and he was released from prison an innocent man about a year ago. However, shortly thereafter, he was detained by immigration.
Appearing before Senior Justice Stephen Isaacs, Smith successfully argued that the committal order under which his client was being held at the Carmichael Road Detention Center was defective, having been granted under a section of the Immigration Act that does not even exist.
The order also listed the period of detention as “unknown.” Smith pointed out that indefinite detention is illegal in The Bahamas as we are “not a dictatorship”, and those awaiting deportation from The Bahamas can only he held for a reasonable period of time.
Smith said, "Mr. Sewell has been detained at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre since 3 November 2014. He has therefore been in administrative detention for almost a year. This is not a reasonable period of time. Indeed, on the Immigration Department’s own case, they appear to blame the delay in large part on Mr. Sewell’s father’s failure to buy a ticket to effect his son’s deportation.
"This argument is absurd. It is for the Immigration Department to ensure that detention is only required for a reasonable period of time. They cannot attempt to shift the financial burden for deportation onto the family members of those detained and then blame delays on those family members’ inability to pay."
Smith also took aim at the existing methods of enforcing immigration laws generally, noting that a number of the department’s tactics continue to be inhumane and unlawful.
In particular, he showed that based on previous decisions of the courts in The Bahamas, going back to the 1980s, every person detained by an immigration official or other peace officer must be brought before a court within 48 hours.
He referred to the famous Bahamas Court of Appeal case concerning Japanese detainee Atain Takitota, who was wrongfully held at HMP and the Detention Center for more than 8 years, before being released and awarded substantial damages by the court.
Smith quoted former COA president Dame Joan Sawyer as asserting that, "“Detention or arrest with a view to deportation without being taken before a court is not permissible.”
Smith also pointed out that nowhere in the Immigration Act, or Bahamian law more broadly, does the offense of having "no status" exist. He noted that there are only three immigration offenses: entering without permission, overstaying or working without a permit.
Therefore, the practice of conducting raids and roadblocks in which proof of status is demanded are illegal, Smith said. He referred to his own case; Smith vs Commissioner of Police in the 1980s when the Supreme Court declared arbitrary roadblocks by the Police unconstitutional.
In response to a suggestion by the Attorney General's office that if released, Sewell would likely be detained again under a legitimate detention order, Smith warned that his client plans to sue the government for considerable damages and any further attempts to interfere with his liberty would be treated as aggravating circumstances and increasing punitive damages in that suit.
Senior Justice Isaacs accepted Smith’s arguments and granted Sewell his freedom, instructed the authorities to return his passport which they had held for the last 9 years, and ordered that they find some form status for him during the next 60 days so he has time to get his travel documents in order and return to Jamaica unmolested.
Sewell was 18 years old when he first legally came to The Bahamas to visit his father, who lives here. At the time he was preparing to join the Jamaican Defense Force. Now, nearly a decade later, he said he plans to renew that dream upon his return home.
© Copyright 2015 by thebahamasweekly.com
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