Bishop family still feeling pain of October 1983 executions

Like a sore continually being picked open, the emotions of the relatives of those killed in Grenada during the bloody uprising of October 1983 have not been allowed to heal.

This is exactly how Ann Bishop feels.{{more}}

“Every time October comes around, I relive everything, I feel the pain,” she told SEARCHLIGHT on Tuesday, the day before the judgment on the “Grenada 13” was handed down.

Ann is the elder sister of Maurice Bishop, who, along with the government ministers who remained loyal to him, was rounded up by his former deputy Bernard Coard and executed on October 19, 1983.

So as the wheels of justice turned slowly over the years, Ann says that while she never got over her brother’s death she has been looking on to see the outcome like every body else.

“It has been 24 years, I didn’t expect this to still be going on,” she told SEARCHLIGHT, the frustration evident in her voice.

While she agreed to speak to us, Ann said that it was interviews like what we were seeking that kept the nightmare ever before her.

She said that while the other families of those killed by Coard and his gang have been going to the court and displaying placards expressing their desire to see those responsible remain in jail, for her part, she has stayed away.

“I have a bad leg,” she offered as her first reason but added what sounded like the real one, “I just want to keep a cool head and a low profile. My family has been through a lot,” she said.

Ann lives with their mother Alimenta, 92, who because of some bad experiences in the past wanted nothing to do with the press.

To a packed courtroom in Grenada last Wednesday, Justice Francis Belle announced that three of the “Grenada 13”: Cecil Prime, Christopher Stroude, and Lester Redhead would be freed later that day.

During the re-sentencing trial, the prosecution had indicated that there had been little evidence against Prime, Stroude, and Redhead to identify them as having a part in the 1983 executions.

The others have been re-sentenced for up to 40 years in prison – 35 years of which most of them have already served.

Two of the 13 will have a review on health grounds in the next few months.

When SREARCHLIGHT called Ann last Wednesday afternoon on the heels of the verdict, with a sound of frustration and disappointment in her voice, she informed us that their attorney had advised them not to speak to the press on their feelings about the judgment, as her mother strongly enforced the same on the phone extension.

“I guess you can tell how we feel,” Ann however said.

The prosecution had asked for life imprisonment for the men convicted of the 1983 murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, four cabinet ministers, and two others. They were convicted and sentenced to death in 1986, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1991.

In February of this year, the Privy Council ordered that they be re-sentenced.