AN UNOFFICIAL REPORT has emerged that 40-year-old Jamaican pilot, Paul Stephens, who had been locked up in a Qatari prison for close to three years for alleged sexual molestation of a minor, has been released.
Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs Edmund Bartlett issued a release yesterday, saying that Stephens has been freed, but up to late afternoon the foreign affairs ministry did not have any official news on this development.
Foreign Minister Senator AJ Nicholson told the Jamaica Observer that officials at the Jamaican Embassy in Kuwait had earlier this year indicated that Stephens could soon be released. Nicholson, however, explained that he would not be able to get any official word, until today, due to the time zone difference between Jamaica and Kuwait.
Bartlett, who has in recent months accused the foreign affairs ministry of not being strident enough in its submissions for Stephens’s release, said it was his constant dialogue with the Qatari ambassador in the United States, Mohammed Jahan Al-Kuwari, and the diplomat’s own efforts that had helped to drive the appeal.
The Opposition spokesman noted that by the time he intervened, the Government had missed two opportunities to ask for pardon for Stephens. Those opportunities would have been presented during the observance of Muslim celebrations such as Ramadan which, under Qatari customs, allow for amnesties.
But even while he acknowledged the efforts of the Jamaican Government, Bartlett told the Observer: “I certainly can say much of the action that has taken place has been since we stepped in.”
Yesterday, Nicholson shrugged off the assertion that the Government had not done enough, remarking that the Opposition can claim credit if it so wishes.
“We are satisfied that we went overboard. They can take credit, that’s no problem,” he quipped, pointing out that Jamaica’s ambassador to Kuwait had travelled to Qatar twice in relation to the case, and had even assisted with sourcing legal help for Stephens.
Stephens was among several Jamaican pilots who migrated to Qatar in 2010 after the merger of Air Jamaica and Caribbean Airlines. In 2011, he was detained after being accused of sexual molestation, but was eventually found guilty of mistrust of a minor and sent to Salwa prison, where his family says he has suffered under deplorable conditions, and has been subjected to beatings and stabbings.
A justice of the peace, Judie O’Sullivan, who is among those who have advocated Stephens’s release, said upon her scrutiny of the court documents during a visit to Qatar that it was obvious that the charges had been trumped up.
She said, according to the documents, no physical evidence, such as DNA or trauma to the alleged victim, was found to support the original charge of rape.
O’Sullivan claimed that Stephens had been friendly with the girl’s mother, and that it was vindictiveness that had led to the accusation, because the girl saw the friendship as a threat to her hopes for her estranged parents rekindling a relationship. O’Sullivan said, too, that an alleged confession could also not be presented on numerous occasions in the courts. She said the Qatari authorities eventually settled on the charge of “mistrust of a minor”.
The JP told the Observer that she was elated by the news of Stephens’s release.
“I’ve been on this case for over a year. We weren’t getting any help. Everybody seemed to think he was guilty. With all our cries to Government, they thought he was guilty. They probably thought I was mad too. I really need to thank Mr Bartlett and Mr (Robert) Montague… he probably would have been rotting in there,” she stated.
O’Sullivan said that while the junior minister in charge of diaspora affairs, Arnaldo Brown, had been accommodating to the family and Stephens’s supporters, the case was not satisfactorily elevated at the ministry level.
In December, the foreign affairs minister took a statement to the Upper House, outlining all the steps the ministry said it had taken through the Jamaican Embassy in Kuwait, to maintain contact with, and assist Stephens. This included, among other things, several telephone inquiries and three formal requests to the Government of Qatar, requesting the granting of a pardon that would allow Stephens’s early release and departure. (Jamaica Observer)
