Cuban Raul Garcia could be out of prison by next week.
Attorney-at-law David Comissiong told the SATURDAY SUN that arrangements for Garcia’s transfer to a non-punitive facility controlled by the Barbados Defence Force (BDF) had been delayed as a result of security preparations for the visit of the Earl and Countess of Wessex.
“We were warned that the Defence Force would be very much preoccupied with the Royal visit and that as a result of that it might not happen this week. But by next week he could be out of Dodds Prison,” Comissiong said in an interview yesterday, 11 days after Garcia ended an almost month-long hunger strike.
“He will still be in a facility where he’ll be monitored but it would not be a prison-like facility.”
The convicted drug dealer, who completed his 15-year sentence in 2010, remains incarcerated because neither Cuba, where he was born, nor the United States, where he resided from the age of four, will accept him.
Garcia lost his Cuban citizenship and therefore has no legal right to repatriation, while American officials say he is a permanent resident who did not become a naturalized citizen and therefore, under United States law, the country is not compelled to accept him.
Read the full story in today’s SATURDAY SUN.
