TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. JUDGE TEMPORARILY BARS THE HANGING OF CONVICTED MURDERERS

High Court judge Ian Benjamin ordered that Trinidad and Tobago not carry out any executions for at least four days.
The order came after the lead attorney in the matter, Reginald Armour SC, accused the Government of having a two-faced approach to the issue of hanging. He said that he feared a repeat of the 1994 illegal hanging of Glen Ashby. Ashby, who murdered a BWIA pilot in 1987 in Caroni, was executed in 1994 while his attorneys were before the Appeal Court arguing for a stay of execution of the order to hang him. Justice Benjamin ordered the Attorney General, Commissioner of Prisons and Registrar of the High Court to temporarily stay all moves to hang four men who had been told on June 10 that the Mercy Committee would have convened on June 13 to consider their cases, paving the way for their executions. The four were Andrew Dottin, Mark Teeluck, Ramsingh Jairam and Kelvin Dial. The stay also applied to almost 85 other condemned prisoners thought to have benefited from a Privy Council ruling on July 7, 2004, on an appeal filed by convicted murderer Charles Matthew, that their death sentences should be commuted to life imprisonment.