From Caribbean News Now

CASTRIES, St Lucia — In his efforts to extricate Saint Lucia from the sanctions imposed by the United States as a result of still unresolved allegations of extra-judicial killings by the local police, new Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has been caught in a “tangled web” of unrealistic promises, the opposition St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) said in a statement last week.

“Prime Minister Chastanet has now been caught in a ‘tangled web’ as a very direct result of his calculated efforts to make unrealistic promises to the police force and the public at large,” the SLP said.

The killings took place in 2010 and 2011 during a security initiative called Operation Restore Confidence (ORC), which was aimed at reducing violent crime. During the period between 2008 and 2010, Saint Lucia had experienced an unprecedented wave of homicides and violent crimes, particularly in the northern half of the island.

At the time, then prime minister Stephenson King issued a public warning to criminals that “there will be no refuge, no stone will be left unturned and there will be no hiding place for anyone”.

According to an independent report commissioned by the previous SLP administration through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) and conducted by Jamaican police officers, police in Saint Lucia kept “death lists” and carried out extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals in an attempt to minimise the negative effects of violent crime on the island’s economically critical tourism industry.

The so-called IMPACS report also suggested that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers”.

According to the report, officers from the Royal St Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) “staged” a dozen shootings and reported them as murders by unknown assailants, planting weapons at the scene.

These deaths attracted the attention of the United States, among others. In its Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Saint Lucia for 2011, the US State Department reported, among other things, that “the most serious human rights problems included reports of unlawful police killings”. The same report added that there were “12 potentially unlawful fatal police shootings during the year”.

In 2012, local inquests concluded that six of the shootings were justified but the US indicated it did not have confidence in the outcomes of the hearings. Relatives of the victims have insisted they were murdered.

The Jamaican investigators recommended that all police officers involved in the shootings be prosecuted; however, Richard Frederick, a former minister in the previous UWP administration, noted at the time that the director of public prosecutions (DPP) may not be able legally to prosecute police officers involved in the 12 extra-judicial killings of 2010-2011.

According to Frederick, the hands of the DPP are tied as a result of the inquests into the deaths of some men that concluded the police killings were justified.

Furthermore, according to informed sources, the IMPACS report is largely comprised of hearsay, with no substantive evidence, which is possibly another reason why the DPP has been unable to initiate any prosecutions.

Nevertheless, following the State Department report, the US government applied to Saint Lucia what is widely known as the “Leahy Law”, which provides that “No assistance shall be furnished … to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

In a press statement last month, the United States made it clear to the new government in Saint Lucia that the ongoing failure to bring to justice those responsible within the local police force for gross violations of human rights prevents the US from reconsidering the sanctions imposed on the RSLPF under the Leahy Law.

“We have made it clear to the current Saint Lucian administration and prior administrations that the government of Saint Lucia’s failure to bring to justice those responsible within the RSLPF for gross violations of human rights through credible judicial processes and prosecutions, where appropriate, prevents the United States from reconsidering the suspension of assistance to the RSLPF,” a State Department official said.

The most recent US statement on the issue followed a controversial “courtesy call” on US Ambassador Linda Taglialatela in Bridgetown by Chastanet when he announced plans to establish a tribunal, with one member from Britain, one from the EU, one from the US and two from Saint Lucia, to look into the matter and present a road map moving forward.

However, according to the SLP, the government seems to have abandoned its decision to appoint a special tribunal, “Having been obviously told that this would be unconstitutional and compromise the judicial process.”

The SLP noted that, in recent newspaper interviews, Chastanet has indicated that the government will finance a “special prosecutor” to prosecute those alleged of carrying out the killings.

“Prime Minister Chastanet now needs to explain what is different in this approach and that announced by the former government,” the SLP said, noting that “clearly, this was not the approach promised to the members of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force by the UWP before and during the general election campaign”.

On Wednesday, the SLP called on the Saint Lucia government to state its position on how it intends to deal with the IMPACS report and said that it had taken note of changing positions outlined by Chastanet as to how his administration would proceed on the issue.

The SLP said that, when in opposition, the now ruling UWP had indicated that the IMPACS issue would have been dealt with within 100 days of the new administration taking office.

As one regional commentator put it on the eve of the June 6 general election, whichever party forms the next government, they may lose by winning since, as predicted at the time, the US will expect to see bona fide prosecutions of those responsible and any future grants, aid or loans to the Saint Lucia government will be subject to enforcement of strict transparency and accountability requirements.

Any failure or delay in addressing these issues will result in even more stringent application of the Leahy Law by the US along with other relevant sanctions. In particular, according US State Department sources, there are a number of individuals that are at risk of having their US visas revoked or otherwise subject to restricted use or travel within the United States.

In what many in Saint Lucia regard as poetic justice, the new UWP government is now faced with the difficulty of resolving a seemingly intractable problem that it created in the first place some five years ago – how to satisfy the United States on the one hand that the issue is being dealt with in a credible manner and on the other hand avoid serious unrest within the local police force if prosecutions are launched, leading to a further deterioration in the security situation in the island, which has already prompted a travel warning by the Canadian government.

King, who, as prime minister at the time, must presumably bear ultimate responsibility for the ORC fallout, is back in government as a cabinet minister, and Chastanet, as then tourism minister, was also part of the decision-making process.

Meanwhile, former national security minister during ORC, Guy Mayers, has been nominated to take up the post of Saint Lucia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, leading many to speculate that this may be an obvious ploy to confer on him diplomatic immunity from prosecution in relation to the alleged extra-judicial killings.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Allen Chastanet

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