1983 Grenada leader freed, heads to Jamaica

The man who was convicted and jailed for the murder of Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop in 1983 is free.

Bernard Coard was released Saturday along with 13 other prisoners involved in the uprising after Governor General Carlyle Glean Sr agreed to remit the remainder of their sentences.

Coard, who along with Bishop staged a bloodless coup against Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy in 1979, told reporters he plans to go to Jamaica as soon as he gets a passport.

He is eager to reunite with his wife, Phylis, who went to Jamaica in March 2000 after the Grenadian government gave her special permission to go there due to severe health problems.

The Coards were part of the so-called “Grenada 17” convicted of murdering Bishop and some members of his cabinet in a palace coup in 1983.

“I will be spending as little time as possible here. My wife is not well. Her health is not very good. I will join her in Jamaica as soon as I can secure a passport. I will be based there” Coard told reporters.

“I will continue to make my contribution to Grenada as long as it is entirely in a non political non partisan way for obvious reasons”.

On Friday the Grenadian minister responsible for the mercy committee advised the Governor General to remit the remainder of the sentences of the 14 prison plotters and release them.

“Their release is based not on subjective factors but objective factors, their conduct their attitude their industry in prison, their work their contribution to development in prison and other prisoners,” said Ruggles Ferguson, an attorney for the former prisoners.

“What you are seeing here today is the results of institutions working not the arbitrary whims and fancies of politicians,” Ferguson told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

Bishop's People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) took power in 1979 after it ousted Gairy in the first successful coup in the English speaking Caribbean.

The left wing government had close ties with Cuba and later split along ideological lines. Coard and his colleagues placed Bishop and several members of the government under house arrest in October 1983.

The People's Revolutionary Army (PRA) later lined up Bishop and several of his cabinet colleagues against a wall at Fort Rupert, now called Fort George, and shot and killed them.

Earlier, many Grenadians were killed in the cross fire when members of the PRA stormed the Fort in a bid to arrest Bishop who had been taken there by supporters who had removed him from house arrest.

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Three of the convicted persons were released in 2007 after the High Court ruled that they had spent enough time in jail for their roles in the 1983 killings.

The presiding judge also ruled that 10 other convicted men, including Coard, would serve 40 years hard labour on their murder convictions, clearing the way for them to be freed within three years.

The sentencing followed a ruling by the Privy Council that overturned the death sentences that had originally been imposed on the former government and military officers.

The Privy Council had ruled that the death sentences were unconstitutional and as a result this also invalidated the process by which those sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment.

Political commentators say they do not expect the decision to release the final batch of convicted persons to trigger public opposition as had been the case two years ago, when placard waving demonstrators and the then Keith Mitchell government publicly opposed the reduction in their sentences.