25 June 2007

This is a disappointing day for all Bermuda's innocent citizens.

Our judiciary has taught us confidential documents related to Police investigations are fit to print - even if the subjects of the investigation have been fully exonerated of criminal wrongdoing. The ruling seems grossly unfair and is a devastating blow to public confidence in the Police.

Nonetheless the jurists have spoken and their determination, or the determination of a higher court, must be honored because Bermuda is a country of laws and good order.

In the Supreme Court case and the more recent appeals proceedings the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner argued the documents were stolen property, and clearly inappropriate for public consumption. It was a view shared by Premier Dr. the Hon Ewart F. Brown.

However, as Premier Brown has stated publicly, he is not overly concerned with protecting the information relating to him because he has been exhaustively investigated and fully exonerated in a probe conducted by the Bermuda Police Service, Scotland Yard and US Homeland Security. The Premier is more concerned about what it means for others who are persecuted in the press even though they were never prosecuted in court.

Premier Brown said: "The Opposition Leader comes to mind because we all know a former employee at his company was prosecuted for smuggling drugs while on the job. It's my understanding Police questioned Mr. Dunkley. If those Dunkley Police files were stolen from the confines of the Police Department and splashed in the newspapers, it would be grossly unfair; I expect there would be a lot of embarrassing, if not suspicious, information about the Opposition Leader in those old Police files. It would be wrong for those unproven investigative findings to become media fodder.

"The Opposition Party's Chairman also comes to mind - an ex-con who infamously stole $600,000 worth of drugs from the courts. Only about $100,000 of the stolen drugs was ever recovered, according to published reports. But the UBP Chairman served his time and as far as the community is concerned he repaid his debt. If someone conspired to sensationalize his 10-year-old Police files in the press, I would be eager to help him fight off the conspirators - even though much of what he took is still missing. This legal fight is not only about protecting the innocent, but the rehabilitated as well. It is about protecting the good names and good reputations of all citizens."

The Premier is convinced the publication of information from stolen confidential Police files, of an investigation that had concluded and closed five years ago, was conceived and executed by perpetrators as a public lynching of prominent targets in the current and past PLP administrations.

The plotters patently set out to do a political hatchet job on the PLP leadership as the Party's support was cresting with the celebration of Dame Lois Browne Evans' life - at a time when UBP sources had predicted that a General Election would be called.

In response to the Premier's request, the Governor promptly advised the Commissioner of Police to investigate the theft of the Police files and related leaks to the media, subsequent to which, there have been arrests reaching as high as Bermuda's Auditor General – reportedly for possession of copies of stolen police documents apparently kept at his home.

The Court was asked to adjudicate on the prevention of public access to stolen official documents in a despicable political plot in which lies, half truth and innuendos, had been thoroughly investigated.

The Chief Justice's ruling and the ruling today legitimates the publication of any and all allegations lodged with law enforcement agencies, whether factual or not, whether in execution of conspiracies to commit public mischief or not.

Should the recent court judgments stand, Bermuda's long standing supremacist oligarchy would be vested with legal license to intensify the ongoing UBP/media tyranny.

The Attorney General, on behalf of all Bermuda's innocent citizens, will decide what the next legal course of action will be.

The Premier is representing Bermuda at an Overseas Territories Consultative Council Meeting in the Cayman Islands. He is scheduled to return to Bermuda on June 28.