Parole board recommends release of four prisoners serving life

Dec 01, 2019 News

Four inmates serving life sentences are being considered for early supervised release following their appearance before the Parole Board, last month. Kaieteur News has learnt that the four men appeared at the hearing early last month and were recommended for release to the Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan.
Among them are the Vaux brothers (Kornel and Daniel) who were arrested and charged with the July 1993 murder of Baiwant Jaikissoon, an airport worker. They were subsequently sentenced to death after being convicted for the murder on December 19, 1997.
They appealed their conviction to the Court of Appeal of Guyana, and their appeal was dismissed on December 7, 2000. The men, however, later had their convictions commuted to life imprisonment.
Back in 2013, the prisoners were taken off Death Row after a ruling was made by then Chief Justice Ian Chang.
The main reason offered was that the men had been on Death Row for too long and to execute them now would be inhumane treatment. Their stay on Death Row for such a prolonged period meant that they had served a life sentence and to hang them would be to punish them twice, the Chief Justice had said.
What was tested in the case was the provision in Article 39 (2) (introduced in 2001) of the Constitution, which stipulates that in the interpretation of the fundamental rights provisions in the Constitution a court is to pay due regard to international law, international conventions, covenants and charters bearing on human rights.
The ruling followed several requests to the government for information on the case in April 1998, December 1998, December 2000, August 2001 and March 2003 went unanswered; the United Nations Human Rights Committee concluded in August 2004 that the brothers’ trial had been unfair and recommended “an effective remedy, including commutation of their death sentences.
For a number of years the International Human Rights Commission has been plugging for the abolition of the death penalty in many countries. It described the death penalty as barbaric.
Others whose sentences were commuted were Terrance Sahadeo, Ganga Deolall, Bharat Raj Mulai and his brother Lallman Mulai. The latter had also applied for parole.
Terrence Sahadeo and Muntaz Ali were condemned for the murder of 18-year-old Roshana Kassim of Sheet Anchor, East Canje. They had been convicted with Shireen Khan. They have been in prison for over 28 years.
Shireen Khan died in the New Amsterdam Female Prison in December 2009. Before she died she expressed the hope that she could be paroled so that she could see her grandchildren for the first time. She never got that wish.
Ganga Deolall was arrested on October 26, 1993 and charged with the murder of Yvette Lall on November 3, 1993. The body of 29-year-old Yvette Lall washed up at the La Grange koker with a slab of concrete in her stomach and a crankshaft tied to it. The victim’s head had been placed in a plastic bag, and her intestines removed from her gaping stomach before she was submerged in the Demerara River, according to the evidence.
On November 22, 1995, Deolall was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He has unsuccessfully requested parole on a number of occasions.

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Parole board recommends release of four prisoners serving life

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