“Who kill my chil­dren?” wailed Gee­ta See­bran, 64, out­side the San Fer­nan­do High Court on Mon­day short­ly af­ter a Point Fortin man was found not guilty of the 2005 mur­ders of her two sons, Neil and Nigel See­bran.

The pros­e­cu­tion’s case was that four years af­ter the mur­ders Ka­reem Guade­loupe con­fessed to the po­lice the role he played in the mur­ders.

At his tri­al, he claimed the po­lice tricked him in­to sign­ing a con­fes­sion state­ment on the be­lief that he would be al­lowed to go home to his fam­i­ly.

Af­ter a month-long tri­al in the Sec­ond Crim­i­nal Court be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds, the 12-mem­ber ju­ry found him not guilty af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing for al­most two and a half hours.

The ver­dict was fol­lowed by a flood of emo­tions with Guade­loupe hap­py to be re­unit­ed with his fam­i­ly while See­bran’s rel­a­tives were in­con­solable.

The broth­ers were last seen at their home at Sifoo Trace, Granville, Ce­dros, on the morn­ing of No­vem­ber 17, 2005.

Then, on Jan­u­ary 12, 2006, their bod­ies were found hud­dled in a grave about 100 feet to the back of their home.

An au­top­sy re­vealed they died from chop wounds.

As the tears flowed down her cheeks, See­bran said she felt as though they wast­ed their time and mon­ey to trav­el to court for the hear­ing. The moth­er said she had no idea how to move on from this.

“There is no jus­tice. Like it has no law,” she sobbed.

See­bran said she was go­ing home to break the news to her hus­band.

“Is sad to know that you lose your two healthy strong young chil­dren, 23 and 25 years, and no jus­tice. What they want me to do now? Where I go from here now as a moth­er who lose her chil­dren? Just live and move on like if is just two dogs that dead.”

In the years that passed since their death, See­bran said it has been very hard and sad for her, but she prayed to God to give her strength and courage.

“My chil­dren did not kill them­selves. Peo­ple come and kill them and bury them in the back of the house.”

The pros­e­cu­tion case, led by at­tor­neys Sta­cy Laloo-Chong and Joanne For­rester, was that Guade­loupe—who was in cus­tody on an­oth­er mat­ter con­fessed—to the po­lice in June 2009.

In that state­ment, he al­leged­ly told po­lice that he was ap­proached by two men who told him they were paid to kill the broth­ers and he agreed to be the gravedig­ger.

The pros­e­cu­tion case was that the three men dropped them off at the house the night be­fore, they hid in bush­es and in the morn­ing when the broth­ers’ fa­ther left, they went in­to the house.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, they tied the broth­ers’ hands, took them to the back of the house where they were shot, chopped and buried. The men claimed they were paid $15,000 for the job.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice wit­ness­es, Guade­loupe ac­com­pa­nied them back to the scene where they searched un­suc­cess­ful­ly for the fork he used to dig the grave.

The pros­e­cu­tion al­so called the taxi dri­ver who al­leged­ly gave a state­ment to the po­lice that he dropped off and picked up Guade­loupe and the two oth­er men at the broth­ers’ home. How­ev­er, the taxi dri­ver tes­ti­fied that he felt in­tim­i­dat­ed by the po­lice so he just went along with what the po­lice said and he signed the state­ment.

The case for the de­fence

Guade­loupe said he was in cus­tody in an­oth­er mat­ter and he asked an of­fi­cer he knew well to help him be­cause he want­ed to get home to his chil­dren. He claimed that on June 12, 2009, the po­lice took him from Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion to the Homi­cide Bu­reau in San Fer­nan­do.

He said the po­lice asked him ques­tions about his per­son­al back­ground, left and re­turned about an hour lat­er with “pre­pared in­ter­view notes.” He said the of­fi­cer asked him if he could read and write. Guade­loupe said he replied that he could not read all that well, “but if it is about go­ing home you don’t have to read noth­ing.”

Guade­loupe signed the state­ment. He said he al­so told his com­mon-law wife An­na Hope to sign the state­ment be­cause he thought he was go­ing home.

Guade­loupe was charged some­time lat­er with the mur­ders. He was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Lar­ry Williams, in­struct­ed by at­tor­ney Michelle Ali.

Hug­ging his wife out­side of the High Court mo­ments af­ter his re­lease, Guade­loupe said he was hus­tling to sur­prise his chil­dren, now 11 and 12 years old, by pick­ing them up from school.

“Af­ter ten years, I have to look to start life again,” said Guade­loupe who worked as a ma­son pri­or to his ar­rest.

Thank­ing his at­tor­neys, he com­plained that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was too slow.

“It have a lot of men lan­guish­ing and tar­nish­ing in jail on fab­ri­cat­ed ev­i­dence,” he said.