Buchanan: I played no part in Kartel interview
Attorney says latest saga won’t affect appeal of deejay’s murder conviction
Published:Friday | August 20, 2021 | 12:08 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Isat Buchanan, attorney-at-law for incarcerated entertainer Vybz Kartel, has distanced himself from the Fox 5 NY exclusive two-part interview involving his client, which premiered on Wednesday night.
The second part was scheduled to be aired last night at 9 p.m.
While confirming that the voice aired was in fact that of Vybz Kartel, whose given name is Adidja Palmer, Buchanan told The Gleaner that he neither facilitated nor contributed to the interview.
“No, absolutely not,” Buchanan responded when asked if he had played a role in facilitating the process.
The attorney, who is leading the charge for a Privy Council hearing in Kartel’s murder conviction, said the entertainer did the jail house interview while he was at a St Catherine-based correctional facility.
“Those are my instructions. His phone was confiscated, and he was moved to one of those nice $55-million, state-of-the-art facility at Horizon, where they are monitored by the military,” Buchanan said.
He told The Gleaner that he was confused as to why a probe into the matter has now been announced.
“I am thinking that was the basis for the move. It was him, and he was transferred. That’s all I can say,” the attorney said.
The national security ministry had said on previous occasions that Kartel, who was convicted in 2014 for the murder of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams along with three other co-accused, was the subject of contraband investigation in the prisons.
To date, the findings have not been released.
Yesterday, calls to Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of National Security, went unanswered.
When contacted, the Department of Correctional Services declined to comment, informing The Gleaner that a release was being prepared.
Kartel is serving a 35-year prison sentence and has not been released from custody since he was initially arrested and charged on September 29, 2011, at a hotel in Kingston.
Buchanan, who tendered fresh evidence that the cell phone evidence used to convict Kartel was proven by a British phone expert to be tampered with, said that this latest saga will not affect the outcome of his client’s appeal.
“Absolutely not. What happens here in the local space is of no movement,” he told The Gleaner.