– to take legal action against police
Activist Heston Bostwick was yesterday released from custody after being held for three days for questioning about the torching of the Health Ministry.
Bostwick, the Chairman of the Justice for Jermaine Committee, was released from the Brickdam Police Station on $10,000 station bail and he later expressed outrage at his treatment by the authorities. “I am totally upset,” he told Stabroek News yesterday, while claiming that he had been unlawfully detained and the victim of an attempt to assassinate his character. “I will be speaking to my [lawyers] and we will be taking legal action,” he added. He is due to report back to police on Friday morning and he said he would since he had nothing to fear.
On Saturday, Bostwick was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital with stab wounds to his chest and police indicated that the wounds were self inflicted. Bostwick would only confirm that he received five stitches for his injury, refusing to discuss it further on the claim that he did not want to incriminate anyone. He did, however, recommend that some officers who intervened be given speedy promotion for their professionalism. “[It] caused the injury not to be worse,” he said, “It was their professionalism [during] the entire proceedings.”
According to him, a “scuffle” occurred when the police attempted to place him in the lockups. He explained that initially, the police were directed to allow him to remain in the inquiries office but they were later told to place him in the lockups. “I said, ‘I am not going in no lockups,’” he recalled, “‘you can kill me dead I ain’t going in no lockups.’” During the ensuing skirmish, he said, he received a “scratch on the chest, nothing big” and he said the duty officer and others insisted that he not go to the lockups.
Bostwick said while he was at the station, he was handcuffed around a post, which prevented him from moving. “I had to sleep around the post, like a monkey sling-on on a piece of thing,” he said, saying that it was done on the orders of the officer in charge.
He said the police had known of his voluntary service to the force as a Rural Constable, and as a result he was surprised to learn that they were seeking him when he read last Friday’s Stabroek News, which reported that he and another well-known personality, Archie Poole, were being sought in connection with an investigation. He noted that during the previous weekend, two heavily armed police patrols had visited his relatives inquiring about him but after subsequent attempts to verify it, he was told that no patrols had been sent out with such orders. Bostwick charged that the publication of his name was “a clear case of discrimination,” since the names of others being sought were not published. He said, “It tells me that because I am the Executive Chairman of the Justice for Jermaine Committee, immediately you decide to target me. [And] even if I am wanted by the police, I am too well known by the police themselves, they have all my phone numbers and everything, so I feel if it is a case that they need me, it was just a phone call, it didn’t need publishing in the papers.”
After reading about the police wanting him, Bostwick said he immediately reported that he would be turning himself in. Before he was detained, a medical was conducted on him as a precaution. He recounted that the police informed his attorney that they would detain him, pending investigation. Although his lawyers advised him not to give statements until they were present, he claimed he was told by police that if he cooperated with them by giving a statement on his whereabouts on the two days immediately before the Health Ministry fire they would release him.
Bostwick said he agreed, explaining that he could account for the time. He said he only learned of the fire when one of his students informed him about it when he went to teach his class. However, he said, the police reneged on their promise to release him, claiming that aspects of his statement seemed to provoke them. According to him, he told the police that he wished Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy would tell the nation that he and two other persons left the building around 10.30 pm the day before the fire. “If any ordinary persons had told any police that they were the last to leave any place hours before it became a crime scene, they would have been held as suspects,” he said. He added, “As a concerned Guyanese, I would like to know who burned down the Ministry of Health and what was their purpose for burning it down.”
Meanwhile, Bostwick’s attorney Llewellyn John described the police force’s approach as “wholly unsatisfactory”. According to John, a former home minister, the publication of Bostwick’s name attached a stigma to him immediately. Further, with unsolved murders and persons disappearing, he claimed that it was also a dangerous situation. “It if the police want to correct their image, they need to ensure that people can have confidence in what they are doing but if your first means is by publishing persons’ names, it’s hard to remove that stigma,” he noted.
John added that the conditions in the lockups also aggravate the situation, raising the question of persons’ human rights. “What is worrying is the manner in which police force’s behaviour has deteriorated,” he said, “They are not improving the image of the police; instead, they undermine people’s confidence in the police force as a means of protecting the nation.”