CATEGORY:MAJOR DEVELOPMENT --------------------------------- INSIDE GRENADA SUNDAY June 24,2007 Reprinted from Nationnews.com by Maria Bradshaw IF Acting Chief Justice Francis Belle does not recluse himself from the resentencing hearing of Grenada's former deputy prime minister Bernard Coard and 12 others, it could have serious repercussions for the Caribbean Court This, according to political activist and attorney-at-law Robert "Bobby" Clarke, who recently sent a letter to the Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Bryan Alleyne, asking that he reconsider Justice Belle's assignment in deciding the fate of the inmates. Coard et al have already served more than 20 years for the killings of former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and his cabinet colleagues. Last week Justice Belle, who is a Barbadian attorney and high court judge of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, ruled that an application by Grenada's Director of Public Prosecutions, Christopher Nelson, which called for his disqualification, was filled with untruths about his personal involvement with the 13 convicted men. Yesterday, in an interview with the SUNDAY SUN at his Lodge Terrace, St Michael office, the outspoken Clarke maintained that Justice Belle had been closely affiliated with Coard back in the 1980s. "He was a member of a young group which was formed in Barbados in the 1970s and that group had serious discussions with the Stalinist side of the New Jewel Movement (NJM) about the directions they wanted the party to go." He further charged that the Acting Chief Justice's decision not to step down would lead to a belief that Caribbean jurisprudence was flawed and "it will put a big weight on the CCJ to prove that Caribbean judges can run an appellate jurisdiction for the whole of Caricom and Suriname". Personal advisor ---------------------- The 75-year-old Clarke, who was personal advisor to Maurice Bishop from 1979 to 1982, said he was holding a "watching brief" for relatives of the murdered victims after receiving a letter from Annie Baine, the widow of former minister Norris Baine, who was also killed during the revolution to represent them. "They asked me to represent them but it is a state case, so all I can hold is a watching brief," he stated. Clarke, who was banned from entering Grenada after the revolution, also produced an affidavit from businessman Nelson Louison in which he stated he was a senior member of the NJM and that Justice Belle was closely associated with several of the convicted men. Clarke is of the opinion that Louison's sworn statement is "overwhelming evidence" and enough for Justice Belle to step down. "I do not know what Francis Belle is going to do, but if he is decent, he has a duty to recuse himself from the case. Whatever decision is made, in my view, will be appealed to the Privy Council," Clarke argued. Furthermore, he said, at least ten of the 13 convicts should never be released from prison. "It was the most vicious killings in the Caribbean outside the 1964 killings in Guyana and they celebrated the killings up on the hill after," he said. Still hurts -------------------- Clarke confessed that up to this day he still hurts over the death of Minister of Education Jacqueline Creft, who was pregnant when she was executed. "She was a personal friend of mine. I put her in power and she did not want to be. I made her take the job. I remember that about four days before everything happened she called me and said: 'Bobby get me out of this'. I told her that when I get back to Grenada I would tell Maurice that she was leaving the job. I never saw her again." Clarke said he also wrote a letter to Coard ten years ago asking him to come clean. Duty to explain ---------------------- "I told him that he had a duty to explain to the Grenadian public his role in the killings of the people at Fort Rupert because unless the truth comes out the people would continue to have doubts. He never replied." Noting that Bishop's murder resulted in the demise of the socialist politics in the Caribbean, Clarke charged that at least ten of the 13 should never be released from prison. "If they let them out, in my view they will never reach St Georges. They will have to take them out of the country by helicopter", he stated.