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Saturday, May 31, 2025

Framed? Accused in death of US soldier freed

by

Mark Bassant
1658 days ago
20201115
Page 1 image 15112020

Page 1 image 15112020

Marvin Smith

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

With prayers, pa­tience and de­ter­mi­na­tion as his weapon, An­der­son Strak­er, now 47, was able to main­tain his san­i­ty over the last decade and a half as he fought tooth and nail to prove his in­no­cence and gain his free­dom —which will fi­nal­ly come on Jan­u­ary 9, 2021.

Strak­er lan­guished for near­ly 15 years in a Unit­ed States jail for a crime he said he nev­er com­mit­ted—the mur­der of Bal­ram “Ba­lo” Ma­haraj, said to be a US cit­i­zen and war vet­er­an, whose re­mains were buried in two con­tain­ers in the San­ta Cruz for­est in 2005. Ma­haraj, 62, was kid­napped at the Samaan Tree Bar in Aranguez, on April 6, 2005. His re­mains were re­cov­ered on Jan­u­ary 8, 2006.

Strak­er’s ar­rest and in­car­cer­a­tion was an elab­o­rate “set-up”, he says.

“I was made a po­lit­i­cal scape­goat and I have been sit­ting in prison for some­thing I didn’t do and with peo­ple I didn’t know.

“How far are they will­ing to go for po­lit­i­cal mileage, rob­bing Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of their God-giv­en birthrights and equal pro­tec­tion of the law home and abroad...The PNM Gov­ern­ment sold me in­to mod­ern-day slav­ery with­in a jus­tice sys­tem to be tried, where the colour of my skin is my sin...”

De­ter­mined to fight for his free­dom, Strak­er says, “For the past 15 years, I have been a cit­i­zen of nowhere! Prayers, love, and pa­tience is my weapon.”

Strak­er, the son of ca­lyp­son­ian Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, op­er­at­ed his own trans­porta­tion busi­ness for years, was the co-or­di­na­tor of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme un­der the UNC and spent some time help­ing his fa­ther dur­ing his (Pe­ters) UNC po­lit­i­cal cam­paign be­fore he was ar­rest­ed in 2005. For the next 15 years, he was forced to trade his civil­ian cloth­ing for a jail cov­er­all.

Torn apart from his four chil­dren­—one just a new­born when he was ar­rest­ed and the oth­ers ten and un­der—now all grown-up and be­tween the ages 14-25, he spent count­less nights writ­ing let­ters to them or mak­ing tele­phone calls when­ev­er he could to check up on them. He is all torn up about be­ing robbed of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to nur­ture them dur­ing their for­ma­tive years.

“It was very hard and painful that I could not talk to my moth­er and kids for years. When­ev­er I did call the con­ver­sa­tion would be very short be­cause the call cost me one US dol­lar per minute.”

Strak­er and six oth­er Trinida­di­ans were in­dict­ed in the US in 2006. Three years lat­er a ju­ry con­vict­ed Strak­er and Wayne Pierre, Zion Clarke, Ri­car­do De Four, Kevon De­merieux, Christo­pher Sealey, and Kevin Nixon on both counts of hostage-tak­ing and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit hostage-tak­ing.

The Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia af­firmed his con­vic­tion on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015, and the supreme court de­nied his pe­ti­tion for cer­tio­rari (a court process to seek ju­di­cial re­view of a de­ci­sion of a low­er court or gov­ern­ment agency) on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2016. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od Strak­er was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Steven Kiersh.

Faced with two life sen­tences, he tire­less­ly nav­i­gat­ed the US court sys­tem and af­ter fil­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mo­tion that was heard be­tween 2018 and 2019, the judge ruled in Strak­er’s favour over­turn­ing the two life sen­tences.

Strak­er ad­mit­ted it was a bit­ter fight and he was nev­er pre­pared to back down from prov­ing his in­no­cence, even when ap­proached by the US Gov­ern­ment to serve a less­er sen­tence.

Strak­er, who is at the FCI Flo­rence, a fed­er­al prison in Col­orado, told of his or­deal in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing sev­er­al phone con­ver­sa­tions in the last three months.

2255 mo­tion, the game-chang­er

With a new at­tor­ney—Matthew Peed—rep­re­sent­ing his in­ter­est, Strak­er filed a pe­ti­tion to va­cate his con­vic­tion on June 16, 2016, and then four months lat­er, in Oc­to­ber, filed a sup­ple­men­tal mo­tion to va­cate his con­vic­tion with two ad­di­tion­al claims and three sup­port­ing ex­hibits.

The game-chang­er was when Strak­er filed what is termed a “2255” in the Unit­ed States. Through that pe­ti­tion, “A pris­on­er in cus­tody un­der sen­tence of a court es­tab­lished by Act of Con­gress claim­ing the right to be re­leased up­on the ground that the sen­tence was im­posed in vi­o­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion or laws of the Unit­ed States...may move the court which im­posed the sen­tence to va­cate, set aside or cor­rect the sen­tence.”

Strak­er was able to ex­pose the al­leged cor­rupt be­hav­iour of FBI agents in the case, that he nev­er gave a con­fes­sion state­ment to the FBI or TTPS, the fact that Ma­haraj was nev­er a US cit­i­zen when he died, the fail­ure of his de­fence at­tor­ney to prop­er­ly rep­re­sent him, the fact that he was de­nied help from the T&T Con­sulate, an FBI agent’s al­leged sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with the vic­tim’s niece, that he had 12 wit­ness­es who placed him far away from Aranguez the day the plan to kid­nap Ma­haraj was hatched. The al­leged be­hav­iour of the state pros­e­cu­tor who al­lowed one of the co-op­er­at­ing de­fen­dants to live at his home af­ter com­plet­ing his sen­tence and the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment. These were com­pelling­ly laid out in pub­lic court doc­u­ments ex­clu­sive­ly ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

Strak­er gave a stun­ning ac­count of what tran­spired dur­ing his tri­al, how he stood up to the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem, ex­pos­ing the gap­ing holes of a sys­tem that de­prived him of his free­dom for years.

“I want to make it clear it did not come down to me spend­ing time in jail for any less­er crime. I re­versed the two life sen­tences and opened up a can of worms be­fore the court which soon­er or lat­er would make the court look bad,” ex­plained Strak­er.

“In the years in which I fought my case and sent a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor to Trinidad, the US Gov­ern­ment start­ed to make me of­fers, say­ing I can do 30 years and I re­fused their of­fer. They of­fered me 25 years, then 20 years, and I said no. I read a case law that came down to a case like mine, I put it to the lawyer to let the judge know and it came to an of­fer to serve up to 18 years, so the judge could not pass 18 years. The oth­ers who were charged with me al­so filed sim­i­lar mo­tions and got 15, 16, and 17 years, etc, in the end.

“I won my free­dom out­right but pride and shame didn’t let the judge free me out­right. I nev­er one day kept my mouth shut in court...with­out fear, and they hat­ed it bad­ly. I showed them no re­spect at all be­cause I knew bet­ter and hat­ed the po­si­tion I was in,” he said.

The sub­stan­tial hear­ing which last­ed sev­er­al months came be­fore Judge John D Bates at the US Dis­trict Court of the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia in 2018.

In ad­di­tion to his new at­tor­ney Peed, Strak­er hired an in­ves­ti­ga­tor by the name of Trevor Hewick who trav­elled to Trinidad and did ex­ten­sive in­quiries that al­so proved cru­cial in his 2255 hear­ing.

In his mo­tion, Strak­er in­di­cat­ed that the “de­fen­dants main­tained that co-op­er­a­tors fab­ri­cat­ed the de­fen­dant’s pur­port­ed in­volve­ment in Mr Ma­haraj’s kid­nap­ping; that Ja­son Per­ci­val (co-op­er­a­tor) per­suad­ed the oth­er co-op­er­a­tors (those who en­tered agree­ments with the US Gov­ern­ment) to adopt his ver­sion of the al­leged crime...and that the de­fen­dants’ sup­posed con­fes­sions were pro­cured through in­tim­i­da­tion or in­flu­enced by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).”

The in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer at the TTPS, then Sargeant Wen­dell Lu­cas, now head of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB), al­so came un­der se­vere crit­i­cism by Strak­er for the way he han­dled the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Strak­er, who ad­dressed the court be­fore his sen­tenc­ing in 2011, said, “I still would like to know how Sgt Lu­cas came about to charge 14 peo­ple in my coun­try for Mr Ma­haraj mur­der af­ter get­ting a death re­port from my coun­try’s head pathol­o­gist say­ing that Mr Ma­haraj’s death was un­de­ter­mined. The ex­pert says he could not tell how the vic­tim died af­ter his ex­am­i­na­tion.”

Strak­er, in his in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, said that adding in­sult to in­jury, “Can you be­lieve that some of these co-de­fen­dants lat­er re­cant­ed state­ments about know­ing me?”

Nine grounds of re­lief raised eye­brows and among the com­pelling ones were:

1. Coun­sel was in­ef­fec­tive for fail­ing to ar­gue that any pur­port­ed re-ini­ti­a­tion of con­tact by Strak­er with the FBI lapsed in the 18 months be­tween Strak­er’s al­leged voice­mail to FBI agent (Mar­vin) Free­man and the cus­to­di­al in­ter­ro­ga­tion by FBI agents Clauss and Cruz in which he al­leged­ly con­fessed.

2. Coun­sel was in­ef­fec­tive for fail­ing to in­ves­ti­gate and es­tab­lish that the FBI reini­ti­at­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing Strak­er’s in­vo­ca­tion of his right to coun­sel.

3. Coun­sel was in­ef­fec­tive for fail­ing to ob­tain an ex­pert to tes­ti­fy re­gard­ing the vic­tim’s (Ma­haraj) cit­i­zen­ship.

4. Coun­sel was in­ef­fec­tive for fail­ing to de­ter­mine whether the US Gov­ern­ment ful­filled its con­sular no­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments.

The FBI agents’ be­hav­iour

The shock­ing be­hav­iour and meth­ods used by the FBI agents came un­der heavy crit­i­cism in Strak­er’s 2255, as not­ed in his grounds for re­lief, when he was in­ter­viewed at the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion where he had been kept be­tween Jan­u­ary 6-9, 2006.

On Jan­u­ary 9, Strak­er was in­ter­viewed by FBI agents Mar­vin Free­man, Clauss, and Cruz along with T&T po­lice of­fi­cer Wen­dell Lu­cas.

Strak­er re­fused to speak with the in­ter­roga­tors in the ab­sence of his at­tor­ney Theodore Guer­ra, SC, (now de­ceased).

On Ju­ly 29, 2007, while in the cus­tody of the FBI and with­out his at­tor­ney be­ing present, Strak­er was again ques­tioned about his role in the crime.

“Be­fore com­menc­ing the ques­tion­ing, nei­ther Strak­er nor his at­tor­ney had con­tact­ed ei­ther FBI agents Clauss or Cruz and in­di­cat­ed he want­ed to dis­cuss any mat­ter re­lat­ed to hostage-tak­ing of Bal­ram Ma­haraj.”

Ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ment, the in­ter­ro­ga­tion by agent Clauss was not au­dio­taped or video­taped. There was on­ly a state­ment (termed FBI 302) that came out of a con­ver­sa­tion which was not signed by Strak­er. That pur­port­ed state­ment by Strak­er was the sub­ject of a mo­tion to sup­press.

FBI agent Free­man had tes­ti­fied that he re­ceived a record­ed tele­phone mes­sage from Strak­er sug­gest­ing that Strak­er want­ed to speak with him. Free­man did not have any notes re­lat­ed to the mes­sage, the record­ing was not in­tro­duced in­to the state­ment of record, Free­man did not know when the call or calls were made and did not know the lo­ca­tions the calls came from.

Strak­er did not give a con­fes­sion state­ment to the FBI or TTPS

Peed in­di­cat­ed that “Since the Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed no doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence what­so­ev­er that the voice­mail oc­curred, no phone records from the Roy­al Jail, no in­ves­ti­ga­tion notes, no emails to the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers there was room in the record for the court to con­clude that agent Free­man’s tes­ti­mo­ny about the voice­mail was in­suf­fi­cient to car­ry the Gov­ern­ment’s bur­den of proof by a pre­pon­der­ance of the ev­i­dence.”

De­spite this, Strak­er’s al­leged con­fes­sion was in­tro­duced at the tri­al de­spite his ob­jec­tion.

Peed ar­gued that Strak­er’s de­fence for the 2009 tri­al and ear­li­er ap­peals, “had a pro­fes­sion­al du­ty to in­ves­ti­gate all avail­able means of prov­ing that the con­fes­sion was ei­ther in­ad­mis­si­ble or in­au­then­tic.”

Strak­er’s de­fence in­ef­fec­tive

The court doc­u­ment stat­ed that if Kiersh had ar­gued that the pur­port­ed ini­ti­a­tion of a con­ver­sa­tion with the FBI lapsed dur­ing the year and a half when Strak­er left his phone mes­sage for agent Free­man and there was an in­ter­ro­ga­tion at which he al­leged­ly con­fessed, Strak­er would have won his mo­tion to sup­press and the state­ment would not have been in­tro­duced in the tri­al.

Peed in the doc­u­ment said, “Strak­er’s con­fes­sion was the chief ev­i­dence against him, as the rest of the Gov­ern­ment’s case rest­ed on the tes­ti­mo­ny of co-op­er­at­ing wit­ness­es with strong rea­sons to im­pli­cate and har­monise their tes­ti­mo­ny. With­out Strak­er’s FBI 302–which was less favourable than Leon Nurse (co-op­er­at­ing de­fen­dant)–there is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that at least one ju­ror would have har­boured rea­son­able doubts as to Strak­er’s agree­ment with the plan to kid­nap Bal­ram Ma­haraj, par­tic­u­lar­ly since 12 ju­rors unan­i­mous­ly ac­quit­ted Strak­er’s co-de­fen­dant David Su­chit.”

Peed felt that Strak­er had been prej­u­diced by the de­fence’s “in­ef­fec­tive­ness” and a new tri­al should be or­dered.

Kiersh’s ac­tions al­so come un­der deep­er scruti­ny in the sec­ond grounds for re­lief as the de­fence failed to in­ves­ti­gate that the FBI reini­ti­at­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing Strak­er’s in­vo­ca­tion of his right to an at­tor­ney. They said it was in­cum­bent on Kiersh to in­ves­ti­gate “all ap­par­ent­ly sub­stan­tial de­fences.”

Strak­er had no­ti­fied Kiersh that Free­man had called his fa­ther (Pe­ters) who did not want to get in­volved with Strak­er’s sit­u­a­tion. Strak­er’s fa­ther put Free­man in touch with Strak­er’s moth­er, Denise Strak­er-For­tune. Free­man told Strak­er’s moth­er that he had just vis­it­ed her son and he would not talk to him. He asked her to talk to him and he left two con­tact num­bers.

So it was the FBI and not Strak­er that made con­tact. Kiersh, how­ev­er, failed to in­ves­ti­gate this when in­formed by Strak­er be­fore the tri­al in 2009.

Ma­haraj’s US cit­i­zen­ship re­voked af­ter de­sert­ing US army

The ba­sis of bring­ing Strak­er and the oth­ers to the Unit­ed States to face charges in Ma­haraj’s death hinged on the fact that he was said to be a US cit­i­zen. But it turned out that Ma­haraj at the time of his death was not a US cit­i­zen. There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the case to be tried in the US.

Kiersh, it was point­ed out, had failed to ob­tain an ex­pert to tes­ti­fy on Ma­haraj’s cit­i­zen­ship.

The 2255 mo­tion stat­ed, “Ma­haraj’s sta­tus as a US cit­i­zen was both the ba­sis for sub­ject mat­ter ju­ris­dic­tion un­der the US laws and an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of the hostage-tak­ing of­fence.”

In pre-tri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Strak­er dis­cov­ered ev­i­dence that Ma­haraj il­le­gal­ly pro­cured his US cit­i­zen­ship.

Strak­er pro­duced doc­u­ments in court to show that Ma­haraj’s re­al name be­fore was Al­ladin Bar­low John, who had been de­port­ed from the US to T&T.

The 2255 doc­u­ment stat­ed that be­fore the tri­al: (i)Ma­haraj de­sert­ed the US mil­i­tary in 1967, sev­en months af­ter he joined and dur­ing the time of war; (ii) Ma­haraj en­tered the US il­le­gal­ly by over­stay­ing a tran­sit visa and (iii) Ma­haraj ob­tained a per­ma­nent res­i­dent alien reg­is­tra­tion (“green card”) on Au­gust 15, 1986, through mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and con­ceal­ment of ma­te­r­i­al facts, in­clud­ing his pro­ba­tion for pet­ty lar­ce­ny, a crime of moral turpi­tude and pri­or com­mit­ment to a men­tal hos­pi­tal; and (ii­ii) in his nat­u­ral­iza­tion ap­pli­ca­tion Ma­haraj mis­rep­re­sent­ed that he had nev­er been or­dered de­port­ed, when in fact he had. Each of these, stand­ing alone, is a ba­sis for deny­ing or re­vok­ing cit­i­zen­ship.”

And as stat­ed un­der the US con­sti­tu­tion Sec­tion 1425-(“de­sert­ers are “per­ma­nent­ly in­el­i­gi­ble” from be­com­ing US cit­i­zens).

The ab­sence of the signed nat­u­ral­iza­tion cer­tifi­cate, and the 1995 pass­port be­ing struck off the record, an ex­pert could have es­tab­lished that there is too much con­flict to es­tab­lish Ma­haraj’s cit­i­zen­ship.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2255 mo­tion, “This could have es­tab­lished rea­son­able doubt in front of a ju­ry. There­fore, an ex­pert was im­por­tant and coun­sel’s fail­ure to ob­tain one was in­ef­fec­tive as­sis­tance which re­sult­ed in prej­u­dice there­from.”

Strak­er said if there was a re­but­tal tes­ti­mo­ny from an ex­pert wit­ness it could have cast doubt on the Gov­ern­ment’s CIS of­fi­cial case and the “out­come could have been dif­fer­ent.”

In the court tran­scripts in Au­gust 2011 Strak­er ad­dressed Judge Bates and the court and didn’t hold back when he stat­ed, “It is not a joke or a game. It is the foun­da­tion up­on which the US Gov­ern­ment built their case, and it is not proven be­yond a rea­son­able doubt to this day that Mr Ma­haraj is an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. Not be­cause some­one is the hold­er of an Amer­i­can pass­port means they are an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, when it got rules, laws, poli­cies, and con­di­tion (sic) that must be fol­lowed in or­der to achieve it.”

Strak­er de­nied T&T Con­sulate help

Kiersh was al­so crit­i­cised as the de­fence failed to de­ter­mine whether the Unit­ed States had no­ti­fied the T&T Con­sulate about Strak­er’s ar­rest, in­dict­ment or de­ten­tion for him to re­ceive con­sular as­sis­tance.

Un­der the Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion ar­ti­cle 36, the con­sulate must be in­formed prompt­ly of a for­eign na­tion­al’s ar­rest and for­ward com­mu­ni­ca­tion of any de­tained na­tion­al to the con­sulate with­out de­lay and al­so in­form the de­tained na­tion­al of “his right” un­der ar­ti­cle 36 with­out de­lay.

The con­sulate, ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ments, could have among oth­er things help a de­fen­dant source crit­i­cal re­sources for le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and case in­ves­ti­ga­tion and al­so help in ob­tain­ing ev­i­dence or wit­ness­es crit­i­cal to the de­fen­dant’s (Strak­er) case.

Strak­er said he no­ti­fied Kiersh on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions that he need­ed to get in touch with an of­fi­cer at the T&T Con­sulate, but no ef­fort was made to in­form them about his “ar­rest, in­dict­ment or de­ten­tion.”

The US Gov­ern­ment al­so came in for sting­ing crit­i­cism in Strak­er’s 2255 mo­tion. “The Gov­ern­ment’s de­nial of Con­sular as­sis­tance de­nied pe­ti­tion­er (Strak­er) a fair tri­al,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

It was four years af­ter his ar­rest that Strak­er said he was con­tact­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the T&T Con­sulate who had no idea of his “de­ten­tion and in­car­cer­a­tion.”

FBI agent’s sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with the vic­tim’s niece

The 2255 mo­tion stat­ed, “Pe­ti­tion­er’s (Strak­er) con­sular would have as­sured that he re­ceived two lawyers as re­quired in all death penal­ty cas­es. The con­sular would have been able to talk with Strak­er’s moth­er and fa­ther and ob­tained ev­i­dence that the FBI reini­ti­at­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing Strak­er’s in­vo­ca­tion of his right to coun­sel.

The con­sular would have been able to pro­vide ev­i­dence that Strak­er couldn’t reini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion with agent Free­man be­cause “he was al­leged­ly di­ag­nosed with he­pati­tis and kept in quar­an­tine from ear­ly Jan­u­ary through Feb­ru­ary when Free­man claimed he tried to make con­tact.”

The con­sular may have been able to pro­vide the funds for an ex­pert to tes­ti­fy re­gard­ing Ma­haraj’s cit­i­zen­ship, as well.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed, “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the con­sular may have been able to con­vince Strak­er that he should en­ter a plea of guilty and co­op­er­ate with the Gov­ern­ment for a re­duced sen­tence. Strak­er did not trust the Amer­i­can peo­ple or po­lice. Es­pe­cial­ly when there is ev­i­dence that the FBI case agent was hav­ing a sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with Ma­haraj’s niece through­out the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, ar­rest, and fed­er­al in­dict­ment.”

Fail­ure to in­tro­duce Strak­er’s al­i­bi wit­ness­es

An­oth­er key is­sue the mo­tion brought to light was the de­fence’s in­abil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and call al­i­bi wit­ness­es re­gard­ing Strak­er’s where­abouts on April 6, 2005.

The Gov­ern­ment’s lead­ing co­op­er­at­ing wit­ness Rus­sell Joseph had told the court dur­ing the tri­al that Strak­er was present at a meet­ing of the con­spir­a­tors at Mel­low Moods bar when he ar­rived short­ly af­ter 4 pm.

What Strak­er’s lawyer Peed point­ed out in court doc­u­ments was that “it was cru­cial to Strak­er’s de­fence that any tes­ti­mo­ny plac­ing him with the kid­nap­pers on the day of Ma­haraj’s ab­duc­tion be vig­or­ous­ly and thor­ough­ly de­bunked, both for its own sake and to il­lus­trate the un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the FBI 302 doc­u­ment­ing his con­fes­sion.”

Strak­er dic­tat­ed a list of 12 wit­ness­es who in­ter­act­ed with him on April 6 in Ma­yaro to Kiersh’s in­ves­ti­ga­tor Dale Vaugh­an who copied it down by hand.

On May 17, 2008, Vaugh­an trav­elled to Ma­yaro to look for and in­ter­view these wit­ness­es. Ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ment, he was ac­com­pa­nied to Ma­yaro by three in­ves­ti­ga­tors as­signed to oth­er de­fen­dants in the case.

Vaugh­an re­called find­ing four wit­ness­es, but could not re­call who they were and or what they had said. While Vaugh­an was do­ing that, the oth­er three in­ves­ti­ga­tors spent the day on the beach and af­ter some time had passed, he even­tu­al­ly joined them.

One of the wit­ness­es on Strak­er’s list was a man called Ty­rone “Tiger” Carter who rent­ed an apart­ment from Strak­er with his com­mon-law wife, Jamiy­la Alexan­der. Strak­er col­lect­ed rent from them on the sixth of every month.

Vaugh­an did not lo­cate any of these wit­ness­es be­fore go­ing to the beach.

How­ev­er, Kiersh was able to in­ter­view them in No­vem­ber 2008, two weeks be­fore the sup­pres­sion hear­ing. In that in­ter­view, Carter con­firmed that he cleaned up the yard with Strak­er on April 6 and that Alexan­der could con­firm the same. It was al­so stat­ed on the record that Strak­er’s daugh­ter was home from school and saw her fa­ther com­ing and go­ing in the morn­ing and clean­ing up the yard in the af­ter­noon.

But the de­fence did not use Carter’s tes­ti­mo­ny or re­fer to it in his clos­ing ar­gu­ments and did not even speak to Alexan­der to find out if she had seen Strak­er on that day.

Alexan­der re­called that day was Good Fri­day and she and Strak­er spent the af­ter­noon in the yard rak­ing up leaves and bag­ging de­bris, which he then made trips to dump it.

Al­though it was not in­clud­ed in her af­fi­davit, Alexan­der told the in­ves­ti­ga­tor Trevor Hewick, who was hired by Strak­er be­fore the lengthy hear­ing of the 2255 mo­tion, that she worked with Strak­er up to 2-2.30 pm at which point he left to do his fish run.

Ac­cord­ing to the mo­tion, “Based on this tes­ti­mo­ny from Alexan­der alone, it would have been al­most im­pos­si­ble for Joseph’s ac­count of April 6, 2005, to be true. Even as­sum­ing that Strak­er left Ma­yaro pre­cise­ly at 2 pm, it would have tak­en him at least 2.25 hours to trav­el to the Mel­low Moods bar, mak­ing it ex­treme­ly un­like­ly he could have ar­rived be­fore Joseph.”

Joseph had told the court that he took a maxi taxi to the Mel­low Moods bar from Up­per San­ta Cruz and ar­rived be­tween 4.15 pm and 4.20 pm.

But Alexan­der’s tes­ti­mo­ny would have pro­vid­ed the ju­ry with strong rea­sons to doubt Joseph’s tes­ti­mo­ny that Strak­er was at a plan­ning meet­ing by 4.20 pm on the day of the kid­nap­ping.

Oth­er wit­ness­es al­so gave state­ments to Hewick stat­ing that af­ter 2.30 pm Strak­er as­sist­ed a fish­er­man with gas for his boat and lat­er met with a woman who need­ed help to get a lawyer to bail her son out of the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion.

The court doc­u­ment stat­ed that the fail­ure to in­ves­ti­gate and call known al­i­bi wit­ness­es “fun­da­men­tal­ly prej­u­diced his (Strak­er’s) de­fence.”

‘Gov­ern­ment’s mis­con­duct’

Peed be­lieved that Strak­er’s case was se­vere­ly prej­u­diced.

He said in the doc­u­ments that “the Gov­ern­ment en­gaged in mis­con­duct and with­held ex­cul­pa­to­ry ev­i­dence.”

Peed said, “the Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted mis­con­duct by mis­lead­ing a de­fence wit­ness to be­lieve her tes­ti­mo­ny was not need­ed.

“Here the Gov­ern­ment picked up and drove two de­fence wit­ness­es to their rule 15 de­po­si­tions in a lim­ou­sine, asked those wit­ness­es ques­tions, told one wit­ness af­ter de­ter­min­ing that her tes­ti­mo­ny would be help­ful to the de­fence to wait in a room to be called and then drove them home with­out call­ing her (Alexan­der).

“The wit­ness be­lieved that the per­son ques­tion­ing her and dri­ving her around was the de­fen­dant’s lawyer, and won­dered why she was not called. It was the pros­e­cu­tor. This sub­terfuge, if this is what it was, se­vere­ly prej­u­diced Strak­er since Alexan­der was a cru­cial wit­ness.”

When Sun­day Guardian spoke with Peed re­cent­ly he said, “I re­al­ly have no com­ment about the mat­ter.”

With his free­dom on the hori­zon, Strak­er is re­flect­ing on his life and con­tem­plat­ing his next le­gal move as he awaits his re­turn to T&T.

“My emo­tions now that I will be free is with­out hate nor bit­ter­ness to­wards no one but with a love deep and filled with pas­sion and pur­pose to bet­ter serve my peo­ple and coun­try on a whole dif­fer­ent light...strength to see my coun­try, moth­ers, daugh­ters’ chil­dren and every house­hold of all races be treat­ed fair­ly in a so­ci­ety far worst and bad­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed in every as­pect than the coun­try I once knew 15 years ago.

“I em­brace my free­dom to­day with hap­pi­ness no less than how I em­braced the two cor­rupt life sen­tences giv­en with­out fear or sad­ness, a bold­ness to the fact that I knew very well I was a po­lit­i­cal scape­goat.

“They nev­er charged An­der­son Strak­er for a crime, they charged Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters’ son for po­lit­i­cal mileage.”


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