“What would we expect from the old file?” – Shyne Barrow
The Belize Police Department turned to seasoned attorney ‘Dickie’ Bradley to carefully review a set of files pertaining to former Woman Police Constable Michelle Brown’s alleged involvement in the death of Fareed Ahmad. It did so over the weekend after much public pressure was brought to bear on the department to reopen an investigation into the alleged involvement of Corporal Elmer Nah, who, Brown testified in court, was the triggerman that shot the well-known barber on the night of December twenty-seventh, 2017. Bradley was tasked with poring over one hundred and seventy pages of witness statements and other information presented as part of the case against Brown. At the end of that extensive reading, Bradley, an experienced criminal lawyer, determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that Nah was involved in Ahmad’s death. But his findings weren’t enough to convince Opposition Leader Shyne Barrow that the matter should not be revisited in court. This afternoon, Shyne countered the position taken by Bradley, as well as Commissioner of Police Chester Williams.
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
Shyne Barrow
“I wouldn’t expect that a case file from an era that persists today of systematic corruption to produce a set of evidence that would call for sufficient proof of wrongdoing which is what you asked me the last time that we spoke. You said, “What is your solution?” And I said [that] you need to start in the department because how can the DPP prosecute cases if the investigation is compromised. So to say that the Commissioner of Police is offering the case file, what would we expect? We don’t know how much evidence has been tarnished, has been destroyed because we see a culture where Corporal Nah and others have facilitated, enabled and have gotten away with all types of crimes. This is a pattern, so what we would expect from the Commissioner of Police is to open a new investigation which is what he said he would do initially. Then he said, well I will let you look at the old file. What would we expect from the old file? That’s from the old government and we have a new government with a new minister of police who used to say that there was rampant corruption in the police department, from the minister down, and so we expect new eyes, new minds to wrap around and uncover everything, piece it all together and present a new case to the DPP to charge Mr. Nah for the murder of Fareed Ahmad.”
