Bernard Coard tells of torture and remorse behind prison bars

Grenada\'s former deputy prime minister, Bernard Coard, while revealing that he was tortured in prison said he regrets the murders of ex prime minister, Maurice Bishop and members of his Cabinet, according to a report on www. caribbean360.com.



He said the first eight years of the sentence he received following the 1983 coup that led to the murders were \"really brutal\".



\"The man in charge of the prison at that time was from Barbados and he was really mentally ill. You didn\'t need a psychiatrist to tell you that. He could easily have run one of those concentration camps during World War Two...We were tortured,\" he said.



\"We were sporadically beaten to force us to sign certain statements. Sometimes they would wrap a pipe in a wet towel and beat some of the guys on the stomach. I was not one of them.



\"I was beaten about my head, my neck, I was bleeding from my ears. My injuries were superficial. But a medical report on my condition was three pages long,\" Coard added.



The 65-year-old admitted, though, that he and his cohorts were wrong for doing what led to their imprisonment and he felt remorse for his actions.



He said while a lot of good came out of the revolution, the new international airport and better-educated citizens, there was a lot of regret.



\"We took moral and political responsibility for what happened. We did so many things that were wrong and we\'ve apologised. We don\'t apportion blame. We take collective responsibility for everything that went wrong. We accept full moral and political responsibility for all of it. And I am still traumatised by it. It\'s not just a question of remorse,\" he said.