Happy to be home - Ex-con comes in from the cold nearly 30 years later
Published:Wednesday | February 12, 2020 | 12:00 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
One of the first deportees to be processed and released following a charter flight from the United Kingdom yesterday said he was happy to be back home on Jamaican soil, having lived abroad for much of his life.
“Mi feel good to reach home. Deh a foreign too long,” he told The Gleaner, sporting a smile.
The man, who declined to disclose his identity, borrowed a cop’s phone to call his brother to pick him up.
WATCH: 17 deportees land in Kingston
Unlike most of the others who hid their faces, wanting only to be whisked away with their loved ones, this deportee stepped manfully out at the famous ‘Duppy Gate’ at the Special Operations Branch finally a free man.
“I am happy because I wanted to come home. I was in prison, locked up. I am ready to live my life,” he told The Gleaner.
The deportee, who declined to disclose the crime for which he was convicted or the length of his sentence, revealed that he was last on home soil in 1992.
The ex-con and 16 others arrived at Harman Barracks, home of the Special Operations Branch, at 1:55 p.m. yesterday after being flown in on a charter flight from Britain.
The first two deportees made their exit on to Deanery Road at 3:25 p.m.
Not all the deportees had family waiting to collect them and some left in groups to undisclosed locations.
Seventeen Jamaicans were deported from Britain despite a last-minute appeal court challenge.
The deportees had been convicted of a range of offences and served time in UK prisons, the Home Office has said.