More than ten months after they handcuffed themselves to the Speaker’s Mace in the House of Assembly gaining widespread attention, leader of the Bahamas Democratic Movement Cassius Stuart and his deputy Omar Smith had their case thrown out of the Magistrate’s Court today.
The case against the BDM leaders was dropped because Attorney General Alfred Sears felt that the case was “not worth pursuing,” according to an official in the AG’s office.
Prosecutors reportedly felt that the actions taken by the BDM leaders were politically motivated with no threat of harm against the former Speaker or anyone else in the House of Assembly.
It was a victory for the two men, who both failed in their attempt to capture seats in Parliament in the May 2 general elections.
Mr. Stuart and Mr. Smith came face to face today with former Speaker Rome Italia Johnson, who left the court shortly before the case was heard, reportedly because she had been informed by her attorney that the case was about to be dismissed.
On December 3, the two men who were protesting against boundary changes, sat in waiting in the House of Assembly, during the session when the boundaries commission report was being debated and in protest handcuffing themselves to the Mace.
During the last hearing, none of the nine witnesses called against the accused showed up in court, including the former Speaker.
Shortly after his appearance in court, Mr. Stuart told reporters outside the Court that, “Our position was always the same. We were willing to go to the end to the extreme for our action. We believed in the beginning our actions were right. We believed that what we did was just. We believed that gerrymandering is evil and we stood against that.
If we are prosecuted for our actions then we know that God will vindicate us in the end and in the end God did vindicate us.”
Mr. Stuart continued that, “We believe that if the government of the past and the present continue to do evil there will always be persons in society who will rise up and create civil disobedience.”
He called for a Boundaries Commission that is free of political influence.
Mr. Smith, meanwhile, maintained the former government was wrong to pursue the matter.
“We feel that this shows the Bahamian people that you can stand up against the government even when the government is wrong,” Mr. Smith said. “We want the future generations to see that this is something that has been done many, many times before. We’re not the first and we’re not going to be the last.”
Former Speaker Johnson had asked the men to produce a letter of apology.
Ms. Johnson was represented by Catharine Hassan, while the BDM leaders were represented in court by Jamal Davis.
By Yvette Rolle-Major, The Bahama Journal
