Shal­iza Has­sanali

Ten months af­ter ral­ly­ing be­hind the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, Moo­ni­ah Rami­ah is ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment at the Gov­ern­ment's at­tempts to re­sume hang­ings.Al­though the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Cap­i­tal Of­fences Bill 2011 failed to se­cure the req­ui­site sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion PNM on March 1 to be­come law, Rami­ah-who lost one of her sons, Joey Rami­ah to the hang­man's noose-said she was in shock and hurt as she nev­er thought the par­ty she en­dorsed for the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion would have brought for­ward the bill.

Joey, along with Pi­paro's no­to­ri­ous drug baron Dole Chadee and sev­en oth­ers, was hanged in June of 1999. He had al­so been sen­tenced to death for the mur­ders of An­tho­ny "Tooks" Greenidge and Stephen "Bulls" Sandy, whose mu­ti­lat­ed bod­ies were dug up from a shal­low grave in Ca­roni in 1992.Rami­ah said af­ter the UNC had re­sumed hang­ings, the PNM, up­on re­turn­ing to pow­er, promised that this would be a thing of the past.Then Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion Gov­ern­ment came on the scene stat­ing that the coun­try need­ed a change in gov­er­nance.

While she did not say if she vot­ed for Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er, Rami­ah dis­closed that she em­braced the par­ty."It re­al­ly shocked me. I thought the hang­man was dead and over with. I wasn't ex­pect­ing this to sur­face again, es­pe­cial­ly by this Gov­ern­ment."

We need God in our lives

Again de­scrib­ing Joey as her favourite son, Rami­ah said when de­bate on the bill be­gan in Par­lia­ment it was like re­open­ing an old wound."It brought back all the mem­o­ries of that un­for­tu­nate day eleven years ago. It ripped my heart to pieces be­cause I felt that once it is im­ple­ment­ed, in­no­cent peo­ple would be­come vic­tims to the hang­man's noose."Rami­ah said even though Joey was gone, she in­sist­ed that he was not giv­en a fair tri­al, more so, po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were not "up to scratch."Eleven years af­ter Joey's hang­ing, Rami­ah said peo­ple in her com­mu­ni­ty now had re­grets over his ex­e­cu­tion.

"They say if he was around things would have been dif­fer­ent to­day."Sit­ting on a wood­en bench hold­ing a bis­cuit tin con­tain­ing coins, Rami­ah, 75, of Knag­gs Street, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni, said as a Chris­t­ian she did not be­lieve in hang­ing, ar­gu­ing that ex­e­cut­ing peo­ple would not de­ter the crim­i­nal el­e­ments."Too much blood has been spilled in the land. What we need is God in our lives. This is the path we all have to walk if we want to heal this coun­try."

Rami­ah's agony is com­pound­ed by the fact that three of her oth­er sons, Bob­by, Damien and Seenath have been lan­guish­ing on death row for al­most a decade for the mur­der of Thack­oor Boodram, whose de­com­pos­ing head was found in a whisky box at Ca­roni.She is the on­ly known moth­er in T&T with three sons serv­ing life on death row.Rami­ah ad­mit­ted she had to turn to God for so­lace af­ter her life start­ed crum­bling.

'Every­body makes mis­takes'

"God gave me the courage and strength to live. Had it not been for him I don't know how I would have made it."Bob­by, Damien and Seenath were giv­en re­prieves from the hang­man's noose, hav­ing spent more than five years on death row.While Seenath is im­pris­oned at Car­rera, Bob­by and Damien who are in­car­cer­at­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca, have been ex­celling aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly.Both were able to ob­tain CXC pass­es in Maths, Eng­lish and Prin­ci­ples of Ac­counts be­hind bars.They al­so pur­sued com­put­er lit­er­a­cy cours­es.On the day Joey was hanged, Rami­ah said she had just tak­en a show­er and switched on the tele­vi­sion on­ly to hear the trag­ic news.

"The scream I let out, all my neigh­bours heard."Up to this day, Rami­ah main­tains the in­no­cence of her three sons on death row.She said all those who tes­ti­fied against her sons "will get away from man but not from God."She lives with the hope that one day they will walk free."In life every­body makes mis­takes. The on­ly man who is per­fect is God," she said.