Missing JDF witness returned to island, PICA records show

A witness from the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) disclosed on Tuesday that an ex-soldier, who is being sought to appear in the Keith Clarke murder trial as a witness, left the island in May and returned in July.

Deputy Director of Immigrations Marie Lue testified yesterday that travel information retrieved from the agency’s database showed that Albert Spencer left the island on May 10 and returned on July 10.

Lue’s revelation comes a day after Superintendent Eglon Samuels testified that efforts by the police to find the witness have borne no fruit.

The trial heard on Monday that information pertaining to the distribution of guns and ammunition at the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), for May 2010, cannot be located. Spencer was the record keeper during that period.

Samuels testified that he personally went to a community in St Thomas to search for Spencer and did not find him. He said this was after he sought the help of the police communication’s arm, the Constabulary Communication Unit, to broadcast, via different media platforms, a notice that Spencer was being sought.

Additionally, the police witness said under cross-examination that it had come to his attention during his enquiries that Spencer had left the island in July. He also acknowledged that he did not try to find Spencer’s relatives and only searched for him one day after he was given a location where he might have been.

DATA HANDED OVER TO OFFICE OF THE DPP

Lue, however, testified that she obtained the travel data along with two other sets of similar information and handed them over to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions following a request for information in October.

But, under cross-examination from attorney John-Mark Reid, she testified that she did not received any request for a C5 form, which she said would have information about the traveller’s address or where the person intends to stay.

She explained that the form, which is used by PICA and Jamaica Customs Agency, is given to arriving passengers to complete and includes critical information which is fed into PICA’s Entrance Border Management System from which she had retrieved the travel information.

Under further cross-examination from King’s Counsel Peter Champagnie, Lue said the travel report would also include a photograph of the individual but that no request had come from the police for a photograph.

Meanwhile, later in the trial, the defence sought to block the prosecution’s attempt to enter into evidence a certified photocopy of entries made in the ammunition book at the JDF.

Taneish Wisdom, director of evaluation of standards at the Independent Commission of Investigations, who was recalled to the witness stand, said the photocopy entries, along with a cover letter, were received from Captain Chester Crooks.

CROSS-CHECKED THE INFORMATION

Consequently, she said, she was asked to go to the army and to certify the contents. Hence, Wisdom said she did so on June 30, 2011, by going to the legal office where she was handed the ammunition book and cross-checked the information pertaining to the dates given against the photocopy entries.

Wisdom said, when she received the ammunition book, it was open on the pages from which the information was photocopied and she observed that the information corresponded and, as a result, affixed her signature to certify the document.

She also testified that the cover letter contained the numbers pertaining to the entries. When asked what they were, the defence objected on the basis that she was giving evidence on the contents of a document which was not yet in evidence, but was overruled.

The prosecution later asked for the document to be tendered into evidence but the defence objected. The jury was then asked to leave the courtroom for the parties to make legal submissions, and later dismissed while the submissions were being heard.

The judge is to rule today whether the document will be tendered when the matter resumes this morning.

Lance corporals Greg Tingling and Odel Buckley and Private Arnold Henry are on trial for Clarke’s murder.

The 64-year-old accountant was shot 25 times inside his master bedroom at his Kirkland Close, St Andrew home on May 27, 2010, during a police-military operation to apprehend then-fugitive drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com