Fran­cis Joseph

?For the past 48 days, the T&T Guardian has been run­ning this ex­clu­sive sto­ry on the kid­nap and mur­der of Trinida­di­an, Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj, a US cit­i­zen. For nine months, this re­mained a per­fect crime in Trinidad. This was un­til the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI) closed in on sus­pects and the crime was solved. For the past 48 days, the Guardian re­port­ed on what tran­spired at the tri­al, which was held at the Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­al Court be­fore Judge John Bates. Sev­en Trinida­di­ans faced tri­al–Ri­car­do De Four, Zion Clarke, Kevon De­merieux, Wayne Pierre, Kevin Nixon, An­der­son Strak­er, and Christo­pher Sealey. Four oth­ers, de­scribed as co-con­spir­a­tors, gave ev­i­dence for the US Gov­ern­ment in re­turn, hope­ful­ly, for a lighter sen­tence. They were Leon Nurse, Ja­son Per­ci­val, Rus­sel Joseph, and Win­ston Git­tens. At the end of the two-month tri­al, the sev­en de­fen­dants were found guilty and now face manda­to­ry life sen­tences with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pa­role. The four co-con­spir­a­tors will al­so be sen­tenced, but it will be up to the judge to de­cide their sen­tence, al­though rec­om­men­da­tions would be made by the US Gov­ern­ment.

The sen­tence has been put to Feb­ru­ary 12, 2010. Why so far away af­ter the con­vic­tions of Ju­ly 31? There are two is­sues to be cleared up be­fore sen­tenc­ing. First, an is­sue arose that Ma­haraj was not a cit­i­zen of the US and, there­fore, the en­tire tri­al was a nul­li­ty. A crim­i­nal mo­tion is pend­ing for de­ter­mi­na­tion. Should Bates rule that Ba­lo was not a US cit­i­zen, then all the con­vict­ed men and co-con­spir­a­tors would be re­turned to Trinidad. The sec­ond is­sue was the ab­sence of the al­i­bi doc­u­ments for Ri­car­do De Four. The for­mer sol­dier con­tends that he was at­tend­ing a spe­cial forces course at Camp Omega, Ch­aguara­mas, on April 6, 2005–the day that Ba­lo was kid­napped from the Samaan Tree Bar, Aran­quez. De­spite every ef­fort to get the doc­u­ments, De Four was un­able to raise his al­i­bi at the tri­al. His at­tor­neys tried for months to get the log sheet and gate slips from the De­fence Force. It was on­ly on Oc­to­ber 14, that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­spond­ed, say­ing the doc­u­ments were in­cin­er­at­ed be­cause the 40-foot con­tain­er in which the doc­u­ments were stored were dam­aged from the rains.

Should De Four get what he is ask­ing for, he would present it to the judge and seek a re­tri­al. Wit­ness­es have put De Four on the scene when Ba­lo was kid­napped at 6.30 pm. De Four de­nied this, say­ing he was in Ch­aguara­mas and could nev­er have been in­volved in the kid­nap­ping. The pros­e­cu­tion made heavy weath­er of this. The ju­ry heard De Four's di­rect tes­ti­mo­ny and heard from lots of wit­ness­es, but none of them re­mem­bered see­ing him at work on April 6, 2005. The records, which were ten­dered in court, showed De Four teach­ing on the course up to 12 mid­day. Ac­cord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tion, no one had any rec­ol­lec­tion of his pres­ence on the day in ques­tion, but he need­ed per­mis­sion to leave the camp. A se­nior sol­dier who gave a de­po­si­tion, said the de­par­ture records of a camp would on­ly show the dri­ver and not the pas­sen­gers in the ve­hi­cle.

What the pros­e­cu­tion said

As­sis­tant US at­tor­ney, Emi­ly Miller, in her clos­ing ad­dress, said the four co-con­spir­a­tors turned up in court to tell the truth. She said they faced life im­pris­on­ment if they did not. "What oth­er mo­ti­va­tion was there for them to come here and tell the truth about what hap­pened. "You have heard the con­fes­sions/ad­mis­sions and let­ters from five of the de­fen­dants. Zion Clarke point­ed William Clauss to the site where the body was lo­cat­ed. He al­so gave a false iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the camp site. He took the au­thor­i­ties to the ridge of a cliff and told them where to dig to find the ev­i­dence. When they dug, they found the ev­i­dence. Sgt Wen­dell Lu­cas asked him in which con­tain­er was the vic­tim's head and a sub­se­quent check con­firmed the guid­ance giv­en by Clarke." Sealey said he was the gun­man, he went to the Samaan Tree Bar and told Ba­lo "is you we come for." She said Strak­er, De­merieux and De Four all had their roles to play.

She said Ba­lo was an im­per­fect man who was guilty of child ab­duc­tion. It was Strak­er who brought the plan to Nurse in Ch­aguara­mas, and that was to kid­nap Ba­lo's son. Nurse was the one who ad­vised against tak­ing the child and told them to take the fa­ther in­stead. Nurse took the plan to De Four, who knew about clan­des­tine mat­ters and how not to get iden­ti­fied. De Four knew Per­ci­val as they were both in­volved in the Dex­ter Jagdeo kid­nap­ping. There were two crews op­er­at­ing–one from San­ta Cruz head­ed by Wayne Pierre, who was de­scribed as the god­fa­ther. The oth­er crew was the sol­diers, De Four, Steven­son, and Nurse. Next there were the two gun­men, Sha­ka and Boyie. Miller said De­merieux knew that Ba­lo was sick and need­ed his med­ica­tion and he did noth­ing about it. Af­ter Ba­lo died, Pierre said "no body, no ev­i­dence."

"They butchered Ba­lo and took out his en­trails with both hands. Rus­sel Joseph point­ed out the per­sons in court who chopped up the body.

You heard the ran­som calls. Joseph, Per­ci­val, and Git­tens iden­ti­fied all the de­fen­dants. Git­tens nev­er iden­ti­fied De Four. "You have to ask your­self how this crime can be solved. No one at the Samaan tree bar could iden­ti­fy any of the ac­cused. The events took place with light­ning speed. How then could it have been solved? The on­ly way to solve this crime, there­fore, is to get some of the peo­ple in­volved in the crime to speak, and to do so we have to make deals and get their co­op­er­a­tion. "We had to make sure, how­ev­er, that those per­sons were 100 per cent hon­est oth­er­wise they could not get sub­stan­tial as­sis­tance let­ters. They, there­fore, have an enor­mous in­cen­tive to tell the truth. You have to look at what the col­lab­o­ra­tors have to lose if they lie." Al­though Miller spent con­sid­er­able time on each de­fen­dant, she fo­cused on De Four. She asked the ju­ry to view the tes­ti­mo­ny of his friends with sus­pi­cion. She point­ed out that sev­er­al sol­diers had come for­ward to sup­port their col­league.

One, she said, even not­ed that De Four was duped in­to giv­ing a con­fes­sion to the po­lice. Miller said af­ter De Four was ar­rest­ed, he re­mained silent. She said De Four lat­er gave a state­ment in which he stat­ed that he left camp on April 6, 2005 at about 4 pm af­ter re­ceiv­ing a call from Per­ci­val. He signed every page of the in­ter­view notes re­count­ing every ?thing. "He did not say then that his con­fes­sion was false or was fraud­u­lent­ly ob­tained. He had an up­right mil­i­tary bear­ing at the start of the in­ter­view and lat­er start­ed to bend his head. He paused for a while and looked like a man caught out. What he nev­er told you on the stand was where he was on April 6, 2005." Miller point­ed the ju­ry to the cell­phone records for De Four. Be­tween 4.13 pm and 5.30 pm on April 6, 2005, there were eight calls be­tween De Four and Per­ci­val.

She said in May 2005, there were 27 calls be­tween De Four and Per­ci­val. Miller was bru­tal in her clos­ing. "Look at the el­e­ments of the crime–there are sev­en, a US na­tion­al seized and de­tained, they com­pelled a third par­ty to pay mon­ey, or caused acts to be done. They act­ed in­ten­tion­al­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly and not by mis­take, they know­ing­ly vol­un­teered and joined to com­mit the crime. "The Gov­ern­ment has proven that the death re­sult­ed from be­ing held hostage. We do not have to prove that death was part of the orig­i­nal plan. The death was caused by hostage tak­ing. There is no per­fect case or so­lu­tion, but the pros­e­cu­tion has brought you a pow­er­ful state­ment. Weigh the ev­i­dence and look at it with­out bias or prej­u­dice. Find them guilty!" Miller end­ed.