The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE damages awarded to a Cuban-born man who was falsely and unlawfully detained at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre have increased by $148k after the Court of Appeal reviewed his case. 

Ramon Lop will now receive $396k. 

Immigration officers in Grand Bahama arrested him sometime in early May 2009 on suspicion that he tried to take part in human smuggling. Then Supreme Court Justice Indra Charles found that he was eventually detained at the detention centre unlawfully for eight months.

He was never charged nor taken to the magistrate as required by the Immigration Act, according to a Court of Appeal ruling released this week.

 He was released into the Bahamian community in December 2009 but was subsequently charged and convicted in 2010 of shop-breaking and stealing. After serving time for these offences and another one-month sentence in 2014 for vagrancy, he was handed over to immigration authorities and detained for two years and nine months. Once again, he was not charged with a criminal offence.

 He was released after a successful habeas corpus application in the Supreme Court.

 He sued the government for assault, battery, arbitrary and unlawful detention, false imprisonment and breaches of various constitutional rights.

 The government argued that Mr Lop’s arrest and detention were lawful.

 “They asserted that every effort had been made to return him to either Cuba or to the US, but that both countries had declined to accept him,” the Court of Appeal noted.

 Nonetheless, the trial judge found the government liable for unlawfully imprisoning him and for breaching his constitutional right not to be arbitrarily detained. However, the judge found that his constitutional claim for the first detention was statue-barred and awarded him no compensation or redress for that period.

 In increasing the man’s award, the Court of Appeal said the Limitation Act does not limit an aggrieved person’s ability to seek redress after breaches of their fundamental rights and freedoms.

 The Court of Appeal also established Mr Lop’s pre-judgement interest on his award at 2.4 per cent from September 29, 2017, when the Writ of Summons was filed. The post-judgement interest rate is 6.25 per cent from the date of the judgement.