I have received a copy of a Human Rights Complaint (HRC) filed by John Evans re Aina (read Tempura) sent to the HRC, Cayman Islands.

Whilst I am not surprised Evans filed it, I am surprised it took him so long to do it, as I know he was extremely upset and angry when he was able to read the Aina Report after the two Cayman Islands Governors had tried to keep it secret.

The following is taken from the Complaint: (filed 18th March 2016)

I [John Evans] have been treated unfairly ….

My conduct in assisting RCIPS on 3 September 2007 was reviewed in secret and the results of that review (commonly referred to as the Aina Report) were kept secret from me for five years.

It was revealed when the report was finally released on 31 March 2016.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In 2010 the FCO in London accepted a lengthy complaint from Martin Polaine, who had been the legal advisor to Operation Tempura in 2008. The complaint was initially rejected by the Director Overseas Territories at the time, Colin Roberts, but later accepted for investigation after Mr Polaine’s Member of Parliament had intervened. Mr Roberts passed the complaint to the Governor, who at that time was Duncan Taylor. Mr Taylor then launched an investigation into the various allegations and Benjamin Aina QC was employed to conduct this inquiry and produce a report of his findings.

The timeline of the investigation is not very clear but it appears that between November 2010 and the date of the report, 25 February 2011, Mr Aina conducted a completely secret investigation into allegations of some quite serious crimes without at any point contacted any of the accused- this being completely contrary to their rights under ECHR Article 6. This was compounded when Mr Taylor signed off on the report on 7 March 2011 having previous made a carefully worded public statement to the effect that the investigation had uncovered no wrongdoing. A statement he knew at the time was completely false.

Although ECHR Article 6 (3) uses the word ‘charged’ and in this case the police were not involved what Mr Taylor initiated was effectively a process in which one person acted as judge and jury. By eliminating any input from the accused he by-passed all accepted standards of judicial conduct.

At the time Mr Taylor must have been fully aware of the human rights implications of his actions, which resulted in the creation of a permanent record indicating that on 3 September 2007 I had been guilty of a serious criminal offence. That document was then held on file by both the FCO in London and the Governor’s Office for over five years without my being advised of the contents. Even the intervention of the Chief Justice in October 2011 failed to change the situation and, again, his review was conducted in secret so I was unaware of it until the documents were released on 31 March 2016.

During this period the Governor’s Office was well aware of my concerns about the way the report had been compiled. Not only was it repeatedly mentioned in my FOI submissions but it had also been referred to in numerous comments posted on the Cayman Compass and Cayman News Service websites.

Although the report was produced in March 2011 the effective date of this human rights violation is the date the document was made public -31 March 2016.

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

If you use this link – https://www.gov.uk/government/world-location-news/release-of-documents­related-to-operation-tempura – it will provide you with access to the report.
The initial breach of my Human rights occurred when the complaint (‘Original Complaint’ link on the webpage) was accepted by Colin Roberts at the FCO in London (this is the subject of a separate complaint in the UK) in 2010 and I was not advised of the allegations contained therein. It was then passed to the then Governor, Duncan Taylor, who commissioned a secret report (the relevant sections come at the end of Written response ptl and the beginning of Written response pt2- roughly page 70 onwards). That report was completed on March 2011 but the contents were only made public in March 2016.

John Evans is seeking:
An unqualified apology from the Governor’s Office for the distress and inconvenience this has caused me.

John Evans stated: This has been the subject of a lengthy FOI request and it was only after two court hearings and an order by the ICO that details of what had happened were finally released at the end of ·March 2016. During the FOI process the question of whether the Aina report breaches Article was repeatedly raised but was never addressed by the Governor’s Office.

John Evans also stated he had raised his complaint in previous submissions to “the ICO in connection with the FOI request and appeal but was not pursued by them.”

When asked if he had tried to resolve his complaint in any other way he stated: No, as far as I can see there are no alternative options here.

END

It will be very interesting what happens next.

If the powers that be ever believed John Evans was a “push over” they seriously misjudged him.

Watch this space … there may be other developments all pertaining to the above. If there are … I will not be surprised.