Yvonne Ba­boolal

The re­lease of 50 pris­on­ers, via pres­i­den­tial par­dons, promised three months ago has been fur­ther de­layed. New Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore says she is "mak­ing sure every­thing is in or­der" first. "It is be­ing re­viewed. We are not look­ing to stop it. I am mak­ing sure every­thing is in or­der. I am look­ing over the doc­u­ments. I am not look­ing to change the pol­i­cy or any­thing. In a few weeks you will hear some­thing."

For­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney had promised in Au­gust the pris­on­ers would be re­leased in time for last In­de­pen­dence Day, Au­gust 31. It did not hap­pen. Vol­ney, af­ter In­de­pen­dence, said the process had been slowed by the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee's re­jec­tion of over 20 of the rec­om­mend­ed pris­on­ers.

Vol­ney chaired the com­mit­tee. He said the com­mit­tee felt be­cause of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of cer­tain cas­es, it would not be prop­er to re­lease cer­tain pris­on­ers. He said the list had to be re-opened to fa­cil­i­tate the 50-pris­on­er bench­mark and said as far as he was aware no pris­on­ers had been re­leased.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez, in a news­pa­per re­port at the time, said no of­fi­cial word had come to him to re­lease any pris­on­er whose name had been pro­posed for the In­de­pen­dence par­don scheme. In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber Vol­ney said the re­lease of the pris­on­ers had hit a snag be­cause the se­lec­tion process had to be metic­u­lous and well thought out and the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee was still com­pil­ing the list of names to be sub­mit­ted to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, who had the ex­ec­u­tive dis­cre­tion to ac­cept or re­ject the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee.

He said 30 names al­ready had been sub­mit­ted and a fur­ther eight had been signed off.