Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man from South Oropouche has threat­ened to sue the State over an un­pro­voked beat­ing by prison of­fi­cers while he was on re­mand for a rob­bery charge. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing David Ram­sey made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, this week. 

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, in Oc­to­ber 2020, Ram­sey was charged for rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion, de­nied bail and re­mand­ed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. 

His lawyers, Dou­glas Bay­ley and Frank Git­tens, claimed that in April 2021, Ram­sey was in his cell when he saw two pris­on­ers hav­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with a prison of­fi­cer, who was dis­trib­ut­ing lunch. 

They claimed that the of­fi­cer left the cell block, and min­utes lat­er, a group of masked prison of­fi­cers en­tered. 

They claimed the of­fi­cers beat the two pris­on­ers in­volved in the al­ter­ca­tion be­fore turn­ing their at­ten­tion to Ram­sey. 

“At no point did my client try to fight back and de­fend him­self,” Git­tens said. 

“He was kicked to the ground and in his failed at­tempts to block his head and face, he sus­tained nu­mer­ous blows to his head, be­hind his ears, hands and chest,” he added. 

Git­tens claimed that af­ter the beat­ing, which last­ed a few min­utes, Ram­sey was tak­en to the prison in­fir­mary and giv­en painkillers. 

Ram­sey still com­plained of suf­fer­ing pain from his in­juries and was even­tu­al­ly tak­en to Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope for fur­ther treat­ment. 

He was re­turned to prison af­ter be­ing dis­charged and re­mained on re­mand for sev­en months be­fore he was grant­ed bail. 

Git­tens said that Ram­sey planned to sue over the at­tack, which he de­scribed as un­law­ful. 

“The ac­tions of the prison of­fi­cers con­sti­tut­ed un­law­ful as­sault and bat­tery and rep­re­sent a grave breach of my client’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, in­clud­ing his right to the pro­tec­tion of the law and his right not to be sub­ject­ed to in­hu­man and de­grad­ing treat­ment,” Git­tens said.

Git­tens gave the AG’s Of­fice 14 days in which to re­spond to the let­ter be­fore the law­suit is filed.