The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said the Bahamas Department of Corrections is investigating whether a prisoner awaiting trial for firearm possession was deliberately or accidentally deported to Jamaica.

“The institution’s Internal Affairs department is investigating it,” he said yesterday. “Basically, the investigation is focusing on did it happen deliberately or whether it was just a slip in the process. If it happened deliberately, then of course the police will be called in to investigate it and to hold people to account. Already, the Deputy Commissioner and I are addressing systems that could prevent it (from) happening.”

The case involves Jamaican national Ramone Haughton, 25.

Mr Munroe said: “There was a Jamaican national who ended up going to two separate courts, one for an overstaying offence and one for a firearms offence.

“He came up to the institution with two warrants, one for the overstaying (and) one for the firearms. He completed his sentence on the overstaying and he was then released from the facility because that warrant was spent.”

“He ought not to have been released because there was another warrant for the firearms. And consequent to him being released for overstaying, Immigration then deported him back to his home country.”

Asked about the man returning to The Bahamas for trial, Mr Munroe said officials must locate him first.

“Once he is located, then firearms offence being one that is extraditable, we would have to seek his return from his home country in Jamaica,” he said.

Mr Munroe said a more automated approach is needed to manage inmates’ records and warrants.

“We have to get to the point that we manage people with the same automated system where, with the press of a button, you could see he has been here before, he’s here now, and the range of what he’s here now for,” he said. “There (should be) an alert before you release somebody that they are wanted for something else.”