Vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, has joined the call for outgoing United States President Barack Obama to grant a posthumous pardon to Jamaica’s first national hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey for his 1923 mail fraud conviction in the US.

Sir Hilary says Marcus Garvey was the victim of trumped up charges orchestrated by the late J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous anti-black director of the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Noting that Obama was himself the victim of racist campaigns, he says the US president should exonerate Garvey before he leaves office as it is the right and proper thing to do.