The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

GHANA native Joseph Amihere is suing the government for $10.6m with interest for illegally detaining him for nearly seven years at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre, during which time he endured poor treatment where he was “physically, emotionally and psychologically abused”.

Of that sum, $6,890,000 is for false imprisonment, $2m is for constitutional damages by way of compensation and vindication, $1m is for exemplary damages, $500,000 is for aggravated damages, $300,000 for assault and battery and $700 for special damages, his attorney Fred Smith, QC, said.

Last month, the government agreed to apologise and compensate Mr Amihere for unlawfully holding him in detention after he travelled to The Bahamas from Jamaica for a three-week vacation in 2010.

During a hearing yesterday for the assessment of damages before Justice Camille Darville-Gomez, Mr Smith asserted that $10,690,000 was an appropriate figure to award his client to send a “lightning rod of a financial message” to the government that continued crimes against the civil and constitutional rights of people could not continue.

“As you will read the evidence, this is regrettably one of the severest judgments on liability based on the facts in this jurisdiction,” he told the judge. “I don’t think any of the (other) judgments that have happened over the years bear any factual resemblance to the sustained seven years of horrific abuse that Mr Amihere was subjected to.”

Mr Smith said the facts of the case proved Mr Amihere was unlawfully detained for 2,756 days in poor conditions where he was “physically, emotionally and psychologically abused”. He also said the “undisputed evidence” of his client “painted a horror story of unprecedented and continued inhuman and degrading treatment” to Mr Amihere by the defendants throughout the time he was detained.

In view of these facts, Mr Smith requested the payment be made with five percent interest on each of the claims from the day Mr Amihere’s writ was filed in October 2017, until the judgment on liability order was passed on April 19.

Mr Smith also urged the court to consider the sums awarded to the successful plaintiffs in other Bahamian cases where damages were awarded for false imprisonment.

He noted in the 1994 case of Tynes, the plaintiff was awarded $75,000 for one day of false imprisonment. Likewise, Mr Smith contended that in the case of Merson, two days of unlawful detention attracted an award of $90,000 which increased to over $388,000 once damages for malicious prosecution and aggravated and exemplary damages were included. He also referred to the Lockwood case, where a man was awarded $5,000 per day for false imprisonment in 2007.

“We’ve listed 15 cases where the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of The Bahamas have awarded damages for different periods (of unlawful imprisonment)...in different circumstances both in police cases and in immigration cases and your honour will see that in all of those cases fairly substantial awards were made,” Mr Smith said.

“In fact, in the Cleare one, the Supreme Court awarded only $250 a day and so the gentleman got $1,000 and then they appealed it to the Court of Appeal and in that case, the president said we can’t tie things to that $250 (as ruled in a previous judgement) and they in fact gave the gentlemen $20,000 for his two days in prison.”

Mr Smith also said Mr Amihere would not accept the principle of “tapering off” which stipulates that the “longer the period of detention, the lower the amount that is awarded.”

“I submit that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is illogical (and) it is counterintuitive for the victim to get less the longer he has been deprived of his freedom,” he explained.

Still, he said, if the judge did apply a tapering down principle, he would suggest the court provide a “vigorous and valuable daily figure” given the conditions in which Mr Amihere was held and the abuse he was “subjected to verbally and physically”.

“In (the case of Kenyan native Douglas) Nagumi and in other cases, we had suggested based on all of the cases that have been decided, that a figure of $5,000 would have been appropriate because of the conditions and we urge the court here to also use a figure of $5,000 a day. But we factor in as an alternative and say that your honour should award not $5,000 a day, but $2,500 a day. We are prepared to cut it by 50 percent, and we say that will take into account tapering.”

Mr Smith insisted the history of false imprisonment cases in the country suggested the Immigration Department had become a “complete policing, regulatory agency” that was a “law unto itself”. He also said it appeared that the department was not being controlled by any administration that came into power, or by the new Director of Immigration, despite the fact that the courts have “repeatedly emphasised the illegality of holding people indefinitely at the Detention Centre”.

“(We urge) the court to take this opportunity to send a message to the executive that constitutional and civil crimes against people in The Bahamas does not pay and the maintenance of what has been accepted as the Carmichael concentration camp is not acceptable in a free and democratic society where we ascribe in constitution to the respective Christian values and to support the rule of law.

“...Frankly, other than putting some of these people in jail for contempt, the only message that the court can send is a financial one and this is the perverseness of it. All the Immigration Department and all their officers and the defence force officers who keep maintaining the concentration camp... they are never held accountable. The Ministers of Immigration who run them are never held accountable. Who is accountable? It’s all the other citizens in The Bahamas (who) are being ordered to pay costs and damages in what are becoming very many cases.”

Shaka Serville represents the government in the matter. In his submissions, he told the judge the Crown did not accept the suggestion of award asserted by Mr Smith on behalf of Mr Amihere.

“Given the circumstance of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas now…and its financial state of overwhelmedness at the moment as a result of many different factors; not the least of which is the enormous amount of public spending that it has had to endure as a result of...Hurricane Dorian, as well as the local and global pandemic and the economic cries flowing from the COVID-19 saga, we submit that those are factors clearly which, my lady, ought to consider when considering...an appropriate award to be given by a Supreme Court in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas today.”

He also said: “When Mr Smith says that the courts need to deliver an unequivocal signal about its outrage, we would submit that the awards given in the Douglas Ngumi case certainly do that for The Bahamas...given its financial and economic circumstances. In other words, like they always say when the poor lady in church gives $20 to the collection plate, that is far more than the billionaire giving $1m (because) its affect on that poor lady is far greater than the billionaire’s loss in giving up a million dollars. So, the affect is not measured by what the amount is, the affect is measured by what the amount is to the bearer of the amount.”

The judge is set to rule on the matter at a later date.