'Wrong man was hanged ' State ignored last-minute bid, new evidence to save Sankerali
By KEINO SWAMBER
I am one of the nine persons found guilty of the murder of the Baboolal family in Williamsville. Throughout the several hearings i.e., the Preliminary Inquiry, trial, Court of Appeal and Privy Council, Dole Chadee made arrangements for legal representation. At no time did I have my own lawyer. Being in prison, and not fully understanding the need for a lawyer to represent me separately, I went along with the suggestion of Joey Ramiah who told me not to worry about legal representation. The lawyers at the several stages of the different court hearings seemed only concerned with Dole Chadee. Not one of them put forward my case separately and on my behalf. I was liming by a bar in Caroni, Caroni Recreation Club, Harris Street, Caroni. Ramkhelawan Singh, also called "Lolly", was with me. Around 4 p.m., Joey pulled up with a car. There were others in the car. Joey called Lolly who is his brother-in-law. They spoke while I was some distance away. Joey then called me and told me he will pick me up later to make a spin. On previous occasions we would all hang out in the drive-in cinema or bars. Lolly left with him. Around 7 p.m. Lolly came and picked me up. I went in the car. We gave Raffick Mohammed a drop at his home and went to Joey's house in Harlem. Joey and Clint Huggins came out of the house. They asked me to drive a Bluebird wagon. Clint, Lolly and I think Gopaul was also in the car. We went to Valpark gas station and filled up the tank. At the station I noticed the other car behind but I didn't know who was in the car until we reached by Bhagwandeen house in San Juan. He came out of his house and he decided to drive and I jumped in the back seat. From San Juan we went to Williamsville. He drove into a back street and came back out saying "allyuh will come back here and wait." We then went to Chadee's farm in Piparo. This was my first visit there. I saw the other vehicle in the yard. Everybody came out of the car. I alone end up in the car. I came out and leaned against the car while the others went inside the house. About half an hour later, two other vehicles came in the yard, a Sunny and a Mazda 626. The tyre in the Sunny was flat. One of them asked me to take off the tyre. While doing this a Hilux came in. Dole Chadee came out the Hilux. He was talking to Ramiah some distance away. A fellow named Chico told me to put the two tyres in the Bluebird wagon. We both went to fix the tyre. I was driving. This was about 11 p.m. The tyre shop was about half-hour drive away. Chico called for a while. A man came out, opened up the place and repaired the tyres. Chico drove back to the farm. I put one of the tyres on the Sunny. The other was a spare. Sometime after, I saw the same Hilux which I spoke about earlier coming into the yard. The yard is large and the place was dark. I went inside the Bluebird and reclined the seat and was nodding off when Clint Huggins came inside the car. I had seen him about twice before but never spoke with him. I asked him 'What is the scene?' He said 'Don't worry yourself, we going up home just now'. I came out the car, went and drink some water and saw the Hilux coming in the yard. They brought sandwiches and rest them on the Bluebird car. Everybody came outside and ate sandwiches. I saw Joey, Bhagwandeen Singh and Lolly, among others. When everybody done eat, some went back inside and some remained outside. I stayed near the car, went into one and sat. I began to get worried because I couldn't understand what was taking place. Sometime after, Joey came and told me to go with Lolly to the street where Rambo [Bhagwandeen Singh] showed us. Lolly and I left. I was driving the Bluebird and Lolly another car. I think it is a March or a Sentra, it was a four-door car. The farm is in a side road. When we got to the main road, Lolly went in front. We went to the side street in Williamsville to the very end. I remember seeing a shop. Lolly spin round; I followed him. When we got about halfway, we again turned around and drove to the direction of the shop. Two vehicles came up in the same direction. I pulled aside and stopped and so did Lolly. The two vehicles overtake us and stopped. I saw Joey and Clint and Rambo come towards the car. I was driving. Rambo came by the front door. They were in a hurry so I jumped in the back seat. Joey jumped in the front seat, Clint was in the back with me and also another person. We head up to the shop direction with Rambo driving. We reached to the highway and headed for north. We went to Rambo's house. Joey told me to go in the next vehicle and we headed to Sangre Grande. Me, Clint, Joey and Levi Morris who was driving. We dropped Joey off. Levi dropped off somewhere in Cunupia and told me to go ahead. I drove the car and went home. I got home about 3-4 a.m. Next day Kameel Mohammed sent a fella for the keys. I was sleeping. My mom gave it to him. It was only a few days after I heard people talking about four people were killed in Williamsville. I did not read about it before nor did I hear it on the news on TV or radio. I then wondered whether the fellas were involved. I heard the witnesses talk about it but no one ever told me about what happened that night. At no time I knew about any plan to kill anybody nor was I party to any such plans. A few days later I saw Joey and I asked him about what I was hearing and he told me that was nothing for us to worry about. I didn't go into details because we were not friends. About four months later I was arrested and taken to several police stations. At Chaguanas station, Levi Morris was there and he told me 'You ain't know nothing so you ain't have nothing to say".
-This was the full statement given to attorney Nizam Mohammed by Russell SankeraliBy CAMINI MARAJH A last ditch attempt was made to save the life of condemned killer Russell Sankerali after the discovery of a recording in which murdered state witness Clint Huggins exonerated Sankerali of any involvement in the January 10, 1994 murder of the Baboolal family. The State security recording documented an early 1994 debriefing of Huggins by National Security officials. The tape which surfaced on the eve of Sankerali's scheduled June 5 hanging, was first made available to President Arthur NR Robinson at President's House on June 4 and later that day, on the President's directions, to Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj at a private room at Parliament by Huggins's 1994 interrogator and retired Brigadier General Ralph Brown. But the eleventh-hour emergence of the Huggins tape declaring Sankerali innocent of any involvement in the Baboolal killings failed to stop the state-ordered execution of the lone member of the convicted nine who went to the gallows protesting his innocence. In the taped confession heard by this reporter, the rogue policeman and Dole Chadee accomplice to murder, said: "There is ...two guys who is involved in this matter that not really linked to the whole thing in any way. That is Lolly. His correct name is... what's his name? Some Singh...Bhagwan Singh (Ramkhelawan Singh) or something like that. That is Joey's (Ramiah) brother-in-law. According to the Huggins tape: "That night he (Lolly) just drove the car to pick us up but he didn't know...well he knew where we were going and what we were going to do but he didn't go or do anything like that. "The other guy is Saroo. His correct name is Russell Sankerali. He drove the car too but he didn't go and partake in anything. These are just fellas who lime around and that kind of thing." Security sources present during the Huggins interrogations said he spoke more than once of Sankerali's innocence to several officials, including ex-Director of Public Prosecutions Aldric Benjamin, a key member of the prosecution team, insisting that Sankerali knew nothing of the plan to commit murder.
A legal source who heard the 90-minute tape accused the State, through Benjamin, of suppressing material which he said they were obliged to release to the Defence. He said the Huggins tape would have assisted the Defence in raising reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. Reached for comment last week, Brown at first denied the Maharaj meeting but when told he was seen with the Attorney General at Parliament that day by several political reporters covering the weekly sitting of the House of Representatives, he said only: "I am not prepared to discuss the matter." He declined further comment. Maharaj was out of the country yesterday and unavailable for comment. Contacted for comment yesterday, President Robinson issued the following statement through Communications Specialist Arnold Corneal: "Brigadier General Ralph Brown went to President's House and told the President and His Excellency he had a tape in his possession, and he briefly described the contents of the tape. His Excellency did not listen to the tape but instructed the Brigadier General to take the tape to the Attorney General." During the case, State-hired lead prosecutor and English QC Timothy Cassel, responding to two no-case submissions (overruled by the trial judge) made by the attorneys for Ramkhelawan Singh and Sankerali, insisted that there was sufficient evidence, both from Huggins and state witness Levi Morris, to infer that the two were present when the plan to commit murder was discussed and for the distribution of guns, masks and gloves. Morris, in his court testimony, however, talked about eight men being present during the distribution of weapons and other criminal implements. He identified the eight as Huggins, Ramiah, Ramsingh, Stephen Eversley, Thomas, Bhagwandeen Singh, Gopaul and himself. His testimony, during examination by Cassel, states in part that the guns were distributed "amongst us": Q. "They were given out, you say? A. "Yes, sir." Q. "What were you given, if anything? A. "Sir, I was given a 9mm." Q. "Are you able to help us with what other people were given or not, don't guess." A. Joey also had a 9mm. Rambo had a shotgun. Gopaul had a .38. Eversley had a .38. Ramsingh had a .44...I forget the next gun what Thomas had." Q. "And the masks, what happened to them, were they given out as well?" A. "Yes, sir," Q. "How many people were given masks. Again, don't guess if you can't remember." A. "About eight of us." Morris, under threat of the sentence of death, until his guilty plea which earned him a Presidential reprieve, does not place Sankerali on the scene. Huggins's testimony was also vague about whether Sankerali was present or within earshot of the plan to kill. Neither account made clear whether the distribution of guns took place in the house or in the yard where, according to Sankerali, he remained during the visit to Piparo.
Despite this, former member of the prosecution team and current DPP Mark Mohammed says he has no doubt of Sankerali's guilt. He responded this way last week to questions about whether he had any doubt about Sankerali's guilt: "Based on the evidence of Clint Huggins, supported by Levi Morris, no." In the only statement issued following his incarceration, Sankerali, on May 11, 1998, told lawyer Nizam Mohammed he was innocent. Mohammed said last week he believed him. He said Sankerali consistently maintained his innocence, insisting that he was convicted because of his association with Chadee and his men. All nine men relied on a defence that they were never at the scene. None took the box. All, save Sankerali, in a rare statement from prison, maintained that they knew nothing of the murderous events of January 10, 1994.
By Marcia Henville Russell Sankerali was a shy boy, says his mother Aleema Hosein, whose feelings were easily hurt and who liked to stick up under her and a grandmother who "overlike him". That was why he could hardly read or write: he refused to go to school. "Most of the time he was sick. He always sick with fever and tonsil-he was so pet-up and most of the time he don't like to go to school. He like to stay with his grandmother here and me. We used to beat him to go to school [but] he used to come back home and wet his socks and shoes and tell me look how his socks wet and he can't go back to school. He could read a little, write a little. He sign his name nice at the prison when the officer give him the book." Hosein, in her 40s, doesn't cry when she talks about her only child from an arranged marriage that only lasted a month. But she stares at you as she speaks and those eyes state their pain. She had just come from an "important" engagement to do with her son which she didn't disclose, and she was all dressed up in fitted black spandex top and patterned skirt. It was a far cry from the woman who had answered the knock at the metal gate a couple of hours earlier wearing a ragged red dress. As Hosein sat upright on the comfortable sofa in the neat little house on Railway Road in Caroni, sweat trickled down a face caked with foundation. She was fidgeting. "Russell was very, very coward -you couldn't talk hard to him. Since they arrest him there he tell me the truth, he tell me he don't know nothing about that. Yes [I believed him]-I know that-because if there's any fight or any trouble or anything, Russell don't stay around, Russell does walk away." He never had a girlfriend, because he was too shy, she says. And he often stayed at home and played music-"You know the kind those teenage boys like-rock music and rasta songs". And when he wasn't liming at home, he was liming by good friend Raffick Mohammed, who lives close by. Hosein, who says her son was 31, but who Mohammed insists was 37, used to give her boy money every day for whatever he wanted. She said she earned it from sewing. So the question is how did "pet-up" Sankerali get involved with Joey Ramiah and his murderous crew? "I don't know anything about Joey Ramiah," says mum. Nor does she know anything about the other gang members- "You'll have to ask Raffick." She acknowledged her son used to lime sometimes in bars with Mohammed, but he would only drink beer-Carib-she says. Mohammed, speaking to the Sunday Express, says he and Sankerali would go out drinking every day. "Russell's only recreation was drinking and liming. Sometimes [some of the gang members] passed and lime with him." Mohammed disputes Guardian reporter Francis Joseph's claim that Sankerali knew Dole Chadee before the murders. Joseph wrote two weeks ago that Sankerali was among a group of cellular phone- toting men at Chadee's house when he and then AVM reporter Nalini Seelal interviewed the drug lord about six years ago. "That coulda never be true," said Mohammed. "Russell wouldn't ever know how to use a cellular phone." He couldn't even use a regular phone without assistance, says mum. Asked for a comment, Joseph said he had none. "Let's put it this way, I have no comment to make because I'm taking legal advice on the letter published in the Express on Sunday (20)." The letter was from Sankerali's uncle, Imran Hosein. He wrote to dispute his nephew's presence at Chadee's house too. His mother says she only knows that her son was a "quiet" boy who sent her lovely birthday and Mother's Day cards from prison, assisted by a friend. "Ask anybody around here and they'll tell you about Russell. He was a nice boy, shy, and he love a cinema too bad." 
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