Seventeen-year-old Jahiem Peters has been released from the custody of the police following an order from High Court Judge Simone Morris-Ramlall, who found his detention beyond the statutory 72 hours to have been unlawful.
The order was specifically directed to the Commissioner of Police on Thursday afternoon—one day after the boy’s father, Esse Peters, filed a court action to secure his release.
Justice Morris-Ramlall ordered that the juvenile be immediately removed from the custody and control of the police.
The teenager has accused police at the Vigilance Police Station of torturing him.
On Wednesday afternoon, the elder Peters filed the court action on behalf of his son, shortly after the Guyana Police Force (GPF) announced that based on legal advice, no criminal charges would be laid against the police officers at the centre of the allegation.
He is still a patient of the Burn Care Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital, where he is receiving treatment for burns he said he suffered at the hands of police while in custody at Vigilance.
Up until Justice Morris-Ramlall’s order was given on Thursday, the young man had been shackled and under police guard at the hospital.
The Force has said that the three ranks who were on duty at the time of the incident will face only departmental charges pertaining to neglect.
The young Peters, a fisherman of Annandale, East Coast Demerara, was apprehended by police and taken into custody last week Thursday in relation to an armed-robbery probe.
In his application before the High Court, the elder Peters bemoaned his minor child being questioned by police in the absence of his lawyer, and according to him, not told of his rights either.
Section 2 of the Juvenile Justice Act of 2018, defines a juvenile as a person 14 years or older, but less than 18 years old.
The family, through its attorney, Eusi Anderson, lamented the more than 72-hour detention—for which the law provides without charges being laid—that the teen had been in the custody of the police.
The teen has alleged being “brutally burnt…to his torso and upper body, including his genital region,” by ranks of the Vigilance Police Station.
He vigorously denies the police’s version that it was he who had burnt himself while reportedly smoking in a cell. He maintains that it was the police who had burnt and tortured him.
The GPF on Sunday said that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) was investigating the alleged police brutality.
After reports of the incident surfaced on Sunday, Jahiem and his family and the police presented two different accounts of what transpired.
In a video released by Jahiem’s family, while at the hospital, he accused the ranks who questioned him, as being the ones who also set him on fire.
In the 46-second video, the teen while still in handcuffs and shackles said the police wanted to talk to him about a firearm.
“He wanted to knock me to talk about some gun and I tell he me ain’t know bout no gun and me and he start scuffle and after then he took the lighter and light me… I had to take off my jersey and dash it in the water… and when the ambulance come they say I burn me self… they beat me to say that (I burn me self), when the ambulance come,” the teen has said.
The police version is that around 10.10 am on Sunday, ranks on duty heard screams from the lockups. This led to a rank checking and upon doing so he observed the jersey that Peters was wearing was in flames. At the time, Peters was said to be the lone occupant of the cell.
The police on duty summoned the Emergency Medical Technicians and Peters was treated. While being questioned, police said Peters told ranks that he was given a lighter by another person who was also in custody but was sitting on the bench.
The police alleged that Peters said he was playing with the lighter, igniting it on and off when his jersey caught on fire. As a result, he sustained burns to the ribs on the left side of his chest and hand.
The detainee alleged to have given Peters the lighter has been identified as Keron Williams.
Stabroek News on Wednesday spoke to Williams’ brother, Trevon Williams who was also in custody at the time of the incident and he has refuted the police’s account.
Trevor said that neither he nor his brother had a lighter in their possession and neither did they provide Peters with one. “No lighter. Just we money alone and key and so….Me and me brother didn’t give no lighter…None of that,” he told Stabroek News.
