Cuban national wins award over false detention

NASSAU, Bahamas (CMC): The Court of Appeal has ordered the state to pay US$396,000 to a Cuban national, who had been falsely and unlawfully detained at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre in 2014.

The Appeal Court increased by US$148, 000 the original award after reviewing the case of Ramon Lop, who had been arrested by Immigration officers in Grand Bahama in May 2009 on suspicion that he tried to take part in human smuggling.

But Supreme Court Justice Indra Charles had found that Lop was detained at the detention centre unlawfully for eight months.

In its ruling the Court of Appeal said that he was never charged nor taken to the magistrate as required by the Immigration Act.

He was released i nto the Bahamian community in December 2009 but was subsequently charged and convicted in 2010 of shopbreaking and stealing. After serving time for these offences and another one-month sentence in 2014 for vagrancy, he was handed over to immigration authorities and detained for two years and nine months. Once again, he was not charged with a criminal offence.

Lop was was released after a successful habeas corpus application in the Supreme Court and he later sued the government for assault, battery, arbitrary and unlawful detention, false imprisonment and breaches of various constitutional rights.

But the state argued that Lop’s arrest and detention were lawful with the Court of Appal noting that “they asserted that every effort had been made to return him to either Cuba or to the US, but that both countries had declined to accept him”.

But the the trial judge found the government liable for unlawfully imprisoning him and for breaching his constitutional right not to be arbitrarily detained. However, the judge found that his constitutional claim for the first detention was statue-barred and awarded him no compensation or redress for that period.

In increasing Lop’s award, the Court of Appeal, whose ruling has been released here, said the Limitation Act does not limit an aggrieved person’s ability to seek redress after breaches of their fundamental rights and freedoms.

The Court of Appeal also established Lop’s pre-judgement interest on his award at 2.4 per cent from September 29, 2017, when the Writ of Summons was filed. The post-judgment interest rate is 6.25 per cent from the date of the judgment.