BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) — Four men sentenced to hang in Barbados next week are filing appeals to London’s Privy Council, the highest court of appeal for many former British colonies of the Caribbean, defence lawyers said yesterday.

A marshal on Wednesday read death warrants to the four convicted murderers — Michael Huggins, 27; Frederick Atkins, 31; Lennox Boyce, 25, and Jeffrey Joseph, 27 — after Barbados’ Mercy Committee turned down their appeals for clemency last week.

“The death warrants have been read to them, and the executions are scheduled for Tuesday,” said John Nurse, superintendent of prisons.

However, defence lawyers filed requests in Barbados High Court yesterday that the executions be stayed, and planned to lodge appeals today with the Privy Council.

The council has repeatedly frustrated Barbados’ efforts to execute prisoners by granting clemency in several cases over the past decade. The last hangings in Barbados were in 1984.

“We are seeking a stay of execution as a first step to an appeal to the Privy Council,” defence lawyer, Andrew Pilgrim, said.

“The government is fully aware of the plans for appeal,” Pilgrim said, adding that the British solicitor for the case, Charles Russell, had already been notified.

The death penalty issue has been widely discussed in the region since the Privy Council ruled in March that mandatory death sentences were unconstitutional in seven Caribbean states.

The council’s five judges agreed that to deny an offender the opportunity to persuade the court against the death penalty was to deny basic humanity and rights guaranteed by the countries’ constitutions.

The ruling increased resolve by 10 Caribbean countries to form a regional supreme court and scrap their 170-year relationship with the Privy Council, which they accuse of hindering efforts to enforce the death penalty.

Most countries in the region have popular majorities that support the death penalty as a deterrent to violent crime.

During radio talk shows in Barbados yesterday, most people who called to discuss the four men’s cases expressed frustration that the London-based court could interfere in the sovereign state’s judicial system.

There were some dissenting views. Roman Catholic Bishop Malcolm Galt, of Bridgetown, urged authorities to grant the stay of execution so that “the necessary appeals on humanitarian and other grounds may be heard”.

Of the four men, Atkins was a bus driver before he was convicted in 1998 for the murder of 20 year-old Sharmaine Hurley and sentenced in 2000 to hang.

Boyce and Joseph, of St.Peter, were convicted of killing 22 year-old Marquelle Hippolyte in 1999. And Huggins, of St Michael, was convicted for the 1999 murder of 21 year-old Stephen Wharton.