St Croix citizen wrongly deported from US to Jamaica

LINDEN Winston Graham, who was wrongly deported from the United States to Jamaica instead of his native St Croix, has been languishing in a Kingston police lock-up for more than one year.

Graham, 48, appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court yesterday after attorney Peter Champagnie filed a writ of habeus corpus on his behalf on Tuesday.

He told the court he was deported to Jamaica after serving nine years for a gun-related crime in a high security prison in Arizona, United States last year, but upon his arrival in Kingston it was discovered that he was not Jamaican.

"We questioned him and found out that he knew nothing about Jamaica. We are satisfied that he is not Jamaican," a police officer told the court yesterday.

Graham claims to have been unfairly treated by the US authorities whom he said gave him a Jamaican passport bearing the name Winston Graham without properly investigating his origin. He said checks have revealed that Winston Graham is a white Jamaican.

Graham is black.

According to attorney Melrose Reid, who has been fighting to get Graham sent to his country, the United States has refused to accept him.

"This morning I got a letter saying they can't honour the claim because he falls under a section of the Aliens Act," Reid told the court.

The lawyer said that efforts to contact Graham's relatives in his native St Croix - one of three islands in the US Virgin Islands - has been futile.

The attorney said she had also taken the matter to the governor general, the Attorney General's Office and the Immigration Department without any success.

Yesterday, Graham blasted the US authorities, accusing the Americans of creating a diplomatic mess.

"That's what America does; they create a mess and leave it for other people to clean up. Send me back there let them solve the problem. Send me back to America," he demanded.

He claimed he was set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

"I was an informant for the FBI for three years. They are the ones who did this to me," Graham said.

In the meantime, Graham said he was having a hard time coping with the harsh life at the lock-up at the Kingston Central Police Station.

"I am being treated as a detainee who has committed a crime. I am locked up in a dark cell. It is not pleasant. I have no one to give me anything it is the police at central who sometimes give me toilet paper, soap and toothpaste," Graham said.

The man also informed the court that he would no longer require the services of Reid and indicated that Champagnie was now his legal representative, much to the consternation of Reid, who said she had been working on the case free of cost.

Graham was remanded in custody until September 26 when his case will again be heard.

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