The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

IF FRED Smith, QC, believes the government of The Bahamas is violating the Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Code by detaining illegal migrants at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre, then he should contest his issues in court, Attorney General Carl Bethel said yesterday.

Last week Mr Smith, who is president of Rights Bahamas (RB), took issue that immigration officials were conducting sweeps across the country and those arrested were taken to the detention centre instead of being charged in court.

The sweeps were the result of the Department of Immigration’s search for people believed to have been on a large, empty sloop discovered on the shoreline of Adelaide Beach a week ago. As a result, more than 200 people were apprehended by officials last week. However, it is understood that none of them was from the sloop.

When The Tribune contacted him yesterday, Mr Bethel said: “I am not going to litigate this matter in the papers. The Bahamas government is acting completely within its powers. If someone has an issue they need to contest it in the court.”

Mr Smith last week called on Minister of Immigration Brent Symonette and Immigration Director William Pratt to present all the recently detained people to the courts.

He added that for those detained last week he planned to apply for a habeas corpus or a writ requiring a person under arrest be brought before a judge or into court to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.

“That’s what the law requires,” Mr Smith told The Tribune. “The Constitution says that a person must be taken before a court and/or given bail within a reasonable time and the Criminal Procedure Code says that it must be done within 48 hours or else these people have to be released.

“If these people are not taken before a court and charged in accordance with the law, then Rights Bahamas will be requiring the director to give the names of every person arrested so that we could issue a habeas corpus for them.

“It is illegal to simply hold people without taking them before a court and without giving them bail.”

He continued: “The [Department of] Immigration is not judge, jury and commissioner. So either charge them or release them. Because otherwise all they are doing is acting illegally.

“It is only the court, either the Magistrates or the Supreme Court, that have the power to control who is in custody. Not immigration. So by leaving it in the hands of the ‘Carmichael concentration camp’ [Carmichael Road Detention Centre] despite the prime minister railing against corruption he is actually creating an environment for corruption at the concentration camp. I am very careful in calling it a concentration camp because I have said before the detention centre does not exist under any law.

“Parliament has not provided for its existence so this is just like Argentina and Chile where the government just picks people up and they disappear without any account.

“So Rights Bahamas demands that these people be taken before a court if they are suspected of committing an offence and charged, otherwise publish their names so we could apply for habeas corpus for them,” Mr Smith said.