While he did not say when the report would be released, Prime Minister Christie insisted that the government has nothing to hide and officials at Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) have already submitted the necessary information that is needed to compile the report.
“There is no reason why the government ought not to publish it,” said Mr Christie. “The prison has [given] that report to the ministry. It might be one of those reports that will be laid in parliament when we [return] to parliament.”
HMP has been surrounded in a web of controversy since the beginning of the year. Six days following the prison break, a five-member Court of Inquiry appointed by Superintendent of HMP, Dr. Elliston Rahming, began compiling the report on January 23.
Almost one month later on February 27, Dr. Rahming revealed that the investigations were complete and that the findings were forwarded to the Ministry of National Security. In April, Permanent Secretary in The Ministry of National Security, Mark Wilson, told The Guardian that the government had nothing to hide and would be releasing the findings of the prison break report at what he called, the appropriate time.
At the time, some political opponents had charged that the government was stalling on the report, hoping the public would forget about it. However, Mr Wilson said nothing could be further from the truth.
“We cannot release information to the public that might compromise the investigation and the process of the court,” he said. “Apart from the fact that it might compromise the process,” he added, “That information will be released to the public and we have gone on record as saying that. But we need to be careful of the information that we release.”
Mr Wilson also said that the Minister of National Security, Cynthia Pratt, would release the report’s findings by way of a communiqu� in Parliament, the timing of which would be determined by the House of Assembly’s agenda.
Meanwhile, the internal 36-page report was said to give a thorough account of the January 17 prison outbreak, where four inmates escaped their cells. In the incident, 38 year-old Corporal Dion Bowles was stabbed to death and prisoner Neil Brown was shot dead. Two inmates were immediately recaptured but the fourth prisoner was caught two weeks later.
By: LAURA MATTHEWS & JASMIN BONIMY, The Nassau Guardian
