IN JAMAICA: PUBLIC Defender Earl Witter says 2010 Tivoli Gardens enquiry must await ballistics report....700+ people arrested, 73+ civilians killed (including the estimates for the gunmen and policemen killed) 35+ civilians injured...."If the hearings proceed in the absence of the completed ballistics report, what pertains is a sham, a charade, some kind of a whitewash that must be avoided at all costs,"

 BY BALFORD HENRY Senior staff reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com  Tuesday, March 25, 2014   

 PUBLIC Defender Earl Witter wants the Government to delay the start of hearings by the proposed Commission of Enquiry into the 2010 Tivoli Gardens security forces operation, pending completion of ballistics examinations by the police forensic laboratory.

Witter

"If the hearings proceed in the absence of the completed ballistics report, what pertains is a sham, a charade, some kind of a whitewash that must be avoided at all costs," Witter told a press conference at his office in downtown Kingston yesterday.

He said that the ballistics investigations were still "incomplete, unfinished, under way", and would remain so until the process started under the watch of forensic scientist, firearms examiner and ballistics expert Matthew Noedel is completed.

Noedel, whose expertise was facilitated by USAID and the UNDP, is carrying out investigations into the deaths of more than 70 people, including a policeman, during the operation.

The public defender said that the Government had agreed to a "firearms protocol", drafted by Noedel in 2010, which would have provided the evidence to prove "who shoot who". However, the process has been delayed primarily by lack of co-operation from the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF).

"Only through the ballistic sciences would the commission be able to determine who shoot who, therefore, we should know from the barrel of which firearms were any lethal bullets fired," Witter insisted. more