The lawyer representing Jamaican Shanique Myrie says the conclusion of his government’s official report into her claims of abuse by officials at the Grantley Adams International Airport, shows there is “considerable merit” in what she said.
Attorney Anthony Hylton said he was privy to the official report of the Jamaican delegation and they concluded that her claims of a cavity search did take place at the hands of Barbadian officials.
“This finding was accepted by the Jamaican government,” Hylton told the WEEKENED NATION yesterday.
He said that his law firm HyltonBrown had conducted its own preliminary investigation and too had found Myrie’s account of the events which took place at the airport on March 14 and 15 to be “credible and compelling”.
Myrie reported that on March 14 on arrival at GAIA she was subjected to two demeaning cavity searches by a female Barbadian immigration officer and that she was detained for hours before being deported the following day.
Hylton’s statement came within hours of Jamaica’s Foreign Minister Dr Kenneth Baugh’s statement last night that “the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Barbados has already indicated that she would welcome a visit from Miss Myrie to Barbados, for the purpose of pursuing further investigations”.
Baugh said due process could only be served when Myrie is afforded the opportunity to identify the persons who interrogated her.
He said meetings between a Jamaican delegation and Barbadian officials, a tour of the detention facilities at the GAIA, and a well attended meeting with the Jamaican community in Barbados, “led the delegation to the unanimous conclusion that there are widespread perceptions of negative attitudes towards Jamaicans and that Ms Myrie’s report was deserving of the fullest investigation”.
However, Hylton stated that Myrie would only return to Barbados under certain conditionalities – which he did not spell out.
