In 2007 the London-based Privy Council ordered a re-sentencing of the 13 remaining members of the 'Grenada 17' still in jail in St Georges 24 years after the 1983 US invasion.
Four years after the 1979 revolution, discord within the ruling People's Revolutionary Government resulted in the death of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and others, and provided the pretext for the US assault on the Eastern Caribbean island 6 days later.
The 17 who were jailed for their role...
more »In 2007 the London-based Privy Council ordered a re-sentencing of the 13 remaining members of the 'Grenada 17' still in jail in St Georges 24 years after the 1983 US invasion.
Four years after the 1979 revolution, discord within the ruling People's Revolutionary Government resulted in the death of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and others, and provided the pretext for the US assault on the Eastern Caribbean island 6 days later.
The 17 who were jailed for their role in the coup included Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and his wife, Education Minister Phyllis Coard. Phyllis Coard was released in 2000, and 3 others in 2006. Following the Privy Council ruling the remaining defendants had their sentences reduced from life to 30 years. They are expected to be released by 2010.
The 1979 revolution, led by the New Jewel Movement, overthrew the brutal dictatorship of Eric Gairy and introduced a left-leaning programme of social and economic reform which was widely welcomed by Grenadians, but which immediately aroused the hostility of the United States. US antipathy was heightened by Cuban support for the Bishop government.
The invasion wiped away all traces of the revolution, leaving the small island (population 90,000) dependent on its vulnerable cash crop exports of cocoa, nutmeg and bananas. An American promise to generate untold wealth through a massive increase in nutmeg exports came to nothing.
More recent US intervention has made things worse. Following abolition of the quota system which guaranteed it priority access to the UK market, the Grenada banana industry is in serious decline. The WTO ruling which ended the system was made under pressure from the big North American fruit companies, which resented the tiny fraction of the world market from which the quota system excluded them.
The precise details of the political differences within the PRG which lead to the coup have never been made public. Perhaps, in 2010, the story will at last be told.
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