NASSAU, Bahamas (CMC) – The Grand Bahamas Human Rights Association (GBHRA) has criticized the Bahamas government over the continued detention of a Jamaican “for the better part of a decade”.

The GBHRA said that it was also appalled at the response given by Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell to the case of Matthew Sewell, “an innocent Jamaican man incarcerated in The Bahamas for the better part of a decade.

“The last stage of Sewell’s harrowing ordeal, at the hands of …(the ) Immigration Department, was indeed the result of an error: even after he was declared innocent of all charges by the courts, this poor man continued to be held for another year under an article of the Immigration Act which does not even exist.

“That a man could be held in detention for so long over a mere slip of the pen – with government lawyers fighting tooth and nail to keep him there, even after the error came to light – is indicative of the troubling level of disregard for human liberty displayed by the authorities in The Bahamas today,” the GBHRA said in a statement.

It said that relatives of those held at the Carmichael Detention Center have routinely been ignored, impeded or turned away from the gates when trying to point out cases of wrongful detention.

“Attorneys seeking to protect the rights of detainees have been denied access to their clients, or else told they must get permission from senior immigration officers –a totally illegal demand.

“In any case, when an individual is wrongfully deprived of his freedom, the only way to even begin to correct such a deplorable crime is for the state to make whatever redress the courts think is fit and proper, as outlined in the law,” the GBHRA added.

It said that everyone in The Bahamas is by definition innocent until proven guilty.

“All of the charges leveled at Sewell having been dropped, he remains innocent and was therefore by definition wrongfully imprisoned on trumped up charges,” the human rights group said, noting that “Sewell was held by the Immigration Department for a further year because he “had no status in The Bahamas”.

But the GBHRA said that there are only three violations listed in the Immigration Act: entering without permission, overstaying the allotted time and working without a permit.

“Of these, overstaying is the only charge that could have even remotely been thought to apply to Sewell, although we hope no one would be so bold as to argue that a man who was detained 10 days after he arrived in the country – and who remained either incarcerated or on bail and unable to leave while the state held his travel documents for more than eight years – voluntarily remained in Bahamian territory past the three weeks originally granted him.”

The GBHRA said Sewell is not a number or statistic, he is not a political football.

“Matthew Sewell is a flesh and blood human being whose life has been forever altered by the highhandedness and ineptitude of our law enforcement agencies,” the GBHRA added.