And will the key to the box be thrown away?

Not to my surprise the opening up of the documents pertaining to Operation Tempura will not happen yet.

Even though Tim Owen QC, the UK-based attorney who acted as judge in the Tempura hearing on the latest court challenge by the governor’s office to the Complaints Commissioner’s ruling to have the documents released, mostly discarded the governor’s office’s arguments, we still won’t know what was in them.

The one argument Judge Owen did uphold, though, was their claim that the police were conducting a current and related police investigation and any release of the Tempura documents might seriously impact it.

The judge in his 52 page ruling said Jan Liebaers, the Acting Information Commissioner, was wrong not to have taken up the offer by Police Commissioner David Baines to discuss the criminal enquiry that was underway. This enquiry was “into the allegations and counter-allegations flowing between” Martin Bridger, Tempura’s former senior investigating officer, “and those about whom he had complained”.

Bridger has alleged criminal conduct on the part of Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, the OT security advisor Larry Covington and the governor at the time of Tempura, Stuart Jack.

Brave man.

The RCIPS, though, dismissed all of Bridger’s allegations and now have disclosed they are investigating him!

Interestingly, though, Bridger’s allegations were supported by Cayman’s former police commissioner, Stuart Kernohan, and the former chief superintendent of the RCIPS, John Jones!!

It was in August 2014 that Baines suggested there was a possibility Bridger might be in some legal trouble over certain statements he made regarding the case.

The ‘possibility’ and the ‘might’ were enough, however, for Judge Owen to ask Information Commissioner Liebaers to reconsider his verdict to release the documents. I must point out here that Liebaers’ predecessor, Jennifer Dilbert, had first ordered the Tempura documents release over 2 years ago.

This set the Governor’s office in a flap and as it doesn’t cost them anything at all they brought in all the big guns to shoot the ruling down.

Us, the poor Cayman Islanders have to foot two huge bills – the Governor’s and our own Information Commissioner’s Office.

It’s a real lose, lose, situation for all of us.

And this Bridger investigation was not strong enough to have him taken by the scruff of the neck by the police when he was here in Cayman at the recent hearing before Judge Owens and having his passport taken away thus keeping him here.

It’s probably just as well as if that had happened Bridger could eventually have brought a case for wrongful arrest, had all his luxurious stay paid for by us and a nice sum of money given to him for his incredible suffering at our hands.

The thing about all this that has bugged me goes right back to the beginning when John Evans was asked by the RCIPS to break into the office of his employer, Desmond Seales, Cayman Net News, to look into supposedly incriminating documents Seales had implicating a top police officer ‘grass’ in other words ‘Seales’ mole’.

Neither the RCIPS officer who instigated the search nor Evans has ever been arrested for unlawful breaking and entering. Bridger knew all about this from the time he first came out here. Now he is saying the search was unlawful. Instead, at that time, Evans was forced to stay in the Cayman Islands, I understand at his own expense, because Bridger wanted him as a witness.

If I was working for someone and a senior police officer instructed me to break into my boss’ office would have I just done it?

Now we are back to Pandora’s box.