A prisoner has threatened to go on a hunger strike in protest against alleged mistreatment.
In letters smuggled out of Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, 36-year-old Anthony Bovell cites a series of complaints, from receiving scraps of food to not knowing the exact date of his release.
Bovell has also accused prison authorities of failing to properly handle his medical emergency after he was poked in the eye during a football match in February 2010, not providing meals with sustenance and giving a conflicting date for his freedom.
His letters, hidden between official prison forms, were brought to the NATION by a former inmate who was recently released. Bovell, who is serving a 12-year sentence for a rape conviction, says he is due for release in another two years but does not know the exact date.
Bovell spent seven years on remand before he pleaded guilty in January 2012 and was sentenced last year with the time spent on remand subtracted from his prison term.
In the 11 handwritten pages, Bovell said that all his efforts to get his grievances addressed in prison were “fruitless” so he had resorted to the NATION to have his plight highlighted.
He appeared to suggest that he had also contacted the office of the Ombudsman and the Supreme Court registrar.
“ . . . this actual document is just way of alerting the general public that I Anthony Wayne Bovell do have emence problems getting these technical grievences address and from the 14th of January 2014 I’m willing to refuse my diet until I have gained basic satisfaction . . . ,” read a section of the letter.
The former prisoner who delivered the letters said that because of the way Bovell’s condition was being handled they formulated a plan to get documents and evidence of his medication to the NATION.
Along with the smuggled letters, there were eye drops said to be the wrong medication and a letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions dated March 18, 2013, regarding Bovell’s sentencing delay because the office was awaiting his medical records and a medical report from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
“I promised him that I would not let him down because I think what is happening is wrong,” Bovell’s former colleague told the SATURDAY SUN.
The former inmate, who served time for theft, said that the prison farm produced enough for the prisoners to get a decent meal of starches and meat but often the food was bland and without meat. He said that prisoners were caught in the crossfire between the superintendent and some of his warders and as a result felt they were being ill-treated.
“It’s like a concentration camp in there and I am trying hard not to go back,” he said.
Bovell’s letters spoke of a harsh approach by prison warders to the point where he did not know if his correspondence addressed to the superintendent, Lieutenant Colonel John Nurse, had been passed on.
He had instructed his attorney, he said, to sue authorities over his injury and whether his constitutional rights were breached over the length of time spent on remand for a charge on which bail was available.
Bovell claimed that he was not receiving the prescribed care for his eye.
“That each and every prisoner or inmate are assigned the soul responsibility of the Barbados prison administration, where there are suppose to be adequately supervise, adequately fed, adequately housed and protected or secure and given basic medical care as deme necessary,” he said.
“Where now I have a formal instance where I was literally deny such and later gained a disability to my left eye as a general result of negligence, where being unable to cope with such a disability has further force me to plead guilty through basic fair for my life. Since whilst on remand I have literally more than twenty four clinical appointment that were missed to the ophthalmogy section of the QEH before and prior to loosing my eye and I have also being two various form of wrong medications contrary to what was basically prescribe through an ophthalmologist.”
Attorney Michael Koeiman said that he was on the verge of filing the lawsuit in relation to Bovell’s injury, having received no response from the prison to his correspondence.
“I don’t have any specific instructions in relation to the hunger strike or a date,” he said.
Assistant Superintendent of Prisons Cedric Moore referred the SATURDAY SUN queries to the Superintendent. A message left with his office was not immediately returned.
