Dear Mr Pierre,

I am writing on behalf of CHRG (UK) to express our considerable concern over the decision of the Grenadian Government to deny the Grenada 17 access to their legal representative, Attorney Keith Scotland, who has recently been admitted to the Grenada Bar. Attorney Scotland has been retained by the Grenada17 to prepare a Constitutional Motion on their behalf showing that their trial was manifestly unfair. Despite the provisions of the constitution of Grenada, which states that any person who believes that his right to a fair trial have been or are being contravened may bring a constitutional motion, Attorney Scotland is being denied permission to see any of the Grenada 17 when he visits Richmond Hill Prison.

This is the latest in a long line of unlawful actions taken by the authorities in Grenada and the United States of America to deny the 17 access to justice and to ensure that the people of Grenada do not have access to the truth. Following the invasion of Grenada, the United States removed tons of documents from the island, and the United States Government refused to return them, even though many of the documents were required by the defence during the trial of the Granada 17. Dr Richard Gibson has taken legal action against the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency in the United States District Court in order to secure production of the stolen documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Dr Gibson won his case on 29^th September 1998, but to date the documents have still not been produced. It is clear that the American Government is desperate for these documents to remain a secret, as they would show that the Grenada 17 are innocent and that their justification for the invasion of Grenada is a tissue of lies.

It is clear that the people of Grenada have been consistently lied to about the invasion from the speech given by Mr John Stockwell, the highest-ranking official ever to leave the CIA and go public. Mr Stockwell has stated "I went to Grenada and established a dialogue with Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard and Phyllis Coard…. and then of course I saw the U.S., the C.I.A., mounting a covert action against them. I saw us orchestrating our plan to invade the country. Nineteen days before he was killed, I was in Grenada talking to Maurice Bishop about these things, these indicators, and he and I were both acknowledging that it was almost certain that the U.S. would invade Grenada in the near future." It is therefore clear that had Maurice Bishop remained as Prime Minister, Grenada would still have been invaded by the United States, and he would almost certainly have been demonised by the CIA propaganda machine in the same way that the Grenada 17 have been. When I was in Grenada, a number of people indicated to me that they blamed Bernard Coard for the collapse of the revolution. I hope that they can now appreciate that the revolution was destroyed by the United States, and those Grenadians who were in America encouraging the overthrow of Maurice Bishop.

During the original trial, some of the Grenada 17 made statements from the dock, which catalogued some of the covert action undertaken in Grenada by the CIA, including the planting of the bomb in Queens Park. The information provided by Mr Stockwell shows that these statements, ignored by the court, were chillingly accurate.

The trial of the Grenada 17 was held by a group of judges and attorneys appointed and paid for by the United States. It was not presided over by any constitutional court or tribunal of the island of Grenada. This picking of judges by an occupying power was a very serious violation of the commonly accepted notions of the due process of law. Despite the vast fees paid to the three Appeal Judges, they have still not produced a written judgement justifying their decision nearly ten years after they gave their oral judgement. In the appeal session that I attended, the Chair indicated that the judgement would take him months to write, so why is nothing available a decade later? It is our view that the judges know that the conclusions that they reached cannot be justified in law and for this reason they will never be made public.

In the recent case against the CIA and the other defence agencies, Ramsey Clark, the ex USA Attorney General, gave the following evidence to the court in an affidavit "Despite these incredible procedures, from my review of the record, there was no credible evidence that the members of the Central Committee of the New Jewel Movement ever ordered or even had the opportunity to order the murders of which they were found guilty…. The Regan administration was deeply committed to the invasion of Grenada, and the conviction of the Grenada 17 was central for it’s justification for the unlawful invasion." The whole trial process was bought by the US Government to secure the conviction that it wanted.

Internationally, it is increasingly accepted that the Grenada 17 are innocent, and that they are in effect political prisoners. In his paper "The Last Prisoners of the Cold War Are Black" Dr Gibson says "I spent 1996 in Grenada on a Fulbright interviewing many of the jailed NJM leaders. To say that they are innocent of everything is not the case. To say that they are innocent of the charges against them is….their imprisonment..is a great wrong that needs to be righted." The biggest concern of all for the people of Grenada is that all of this is known to Prime Minister Mitchell. He knows that the Grenada 17 are innocent, and yet he is content to leave innocent people languishing in Richmond Hill. If he is really in control of Grenada, we call upon him to finally give the Grenada 17 justice and release them now.

Yours sincerely,