A Japanese man has been awarded $500,000 in damages after being imprisoned in the Bahamas for eight years without trial.
The Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that Atain Takitota was unlawfully jailed in August 1992 after arriving in Nassau from Osaka, Japan, and being granted permission to remain in the country for one week.
According to the judgment issued by Court of Appeal Justices Dame Joan Sawyer, Lorris Ganpatsingh and Emmanuel Osadabay, Mr Atain was held at both the Carmichael Road Detention Centre and at Fox Hill Prison.
At the prison, he shared a cell with up to 19 people and attempted to commit suicide three times.
The only reason ever given for his detention was that he was an “undesirable and his presence was not conducive to the public good,” the judgment said.
In 2004, a Supreme Court hearing concluded that Mr Atain entered the country illegally and awarded him $1,000 in damages for the “brief’ time he was detained before a detention order came into effect.
According to his statement and other papers in the case, Mr Atain travelled by taxi to Paradise Island on the day he arrived in the Bahamas, and gambled in the casino before checking into a hotel.
“After losing between seven and eight thousand dollars, the appellant realised that his luggage – including the one containing the balance of his money, passport and other papers – had been stolen,” the judgment said.
It said he was arrested on Paradise Island that night and taken to the Central Police Station.
“The police at first suspected the appellant of trying to break into a vehicle and then later of being a vagrant.
“Whatever their suspicions, it is not disputed that the appellant was never charged with either of those offences,” the judgment noted.
A document was compiled based on information given by Mr Atain during a meeting at the police station with Honorary Consul for Japan Basil Sands.
Although nothing in the document suggested that he was suspected of entering the country illegally, the final line recommended a deportation order.
A “deportation cum detention” order was made by the then minister of Immigration, which declared that Mr Atain “shall leave the Bahamas immediately after the date hereof and thereafter remain out of the Bahamas.”
The order stated that the governor-general sanctioned Mr Atain’s detention until such time as he could board a craft about to leave the Bahamas.
However, the judgment noted that “it is not clear from the form how or when the governor-general would have sanctioned the detention of the appellant.”
It went on to note that although Mr Atain was never taken before a court, the prison produced a document claiming that he was sentenced on August 19, 2002 by the “S and C M Court in Nassau” to await deportation.
“Clearly, that was an inaccurate statement. The inaccuracy of that statement begs the question as to where the prison authorities have obtained that erroneous information,” the judgment said.
It further noted that in 1994, the Japanese Embassy in the Dominican Republic said that initial investigations did not identify Mr Atain as a Japanese citizen, but asked: “If you have further information, please let me know.”
“There is nothing on the record to show that any further information or evidence of any kind was ever sent by the Immigration authorities of the Bahamas to the government of Japan – eg fingerprints, or blood for DNA testing or even a photograph.”
The judgment said that medical staff at Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre found that as a result of a car accident in Japan, “the appellant was suffering from retrograde amnesia when he was hospitalised at that institution after attempting to commit suicide, first by going on a hunger strike in 1997 and by slashing his wrist twice on successive days in 1998.”
After each of these incidents, Mr Atain was treated at Sandilands and returned to the prison.
It was also noted that at the original trial, where it was determined that Mr Atain entered the country illegally, the respondents – the attorney general, the director of Immigration and the Minister of National Security – brought the evidence of assistant director of Immigration Lambert Campbell.
Mr Campbell told the court that the Immigration Department was computerised in 1968 and that its records were at least 98 per cent accurate.
“We take judicial notice of the fact that in 1968 there were no modern computers in the public service of the Bahamas generally, and certainly none with the technological ability to deal with machine-readable immigration forms in 1968,” the judgment said.
“We thought it particularly significant that Mr Campbell admitted that around the time of the appellant’s arrest and committal to prison by executive order, a bag which contained, among other things, immigration landing cards, was found on Dowdeswell Street, Nassau.”
The court awarded Mr Atain $400,000 in compensation, as well as $100,000 in exemplary damages, “to show the strong disapproval of the courts for the conduct of the respondents in this case from the time of the appellant’s arrest until this case is finally disposed of.”
It was ordered that interest be paid at 10 per cent a year until the $500,000 is paid.
By Paco Nunez, The Tribune
