20 shots pumped into Clarke
Published:Friday | June 4, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Mark Beckford, Staff Reporter
A post-mortem conducted on businessman Keith Clarke has revealed that he was shot 20 times by Jamaica's security forces on May 27, a human-rights activist has told The Gleaner.
The report documented 20 entry wounds with similar exit wounds, according to Jamaicans for Justice Executive Director Carolyn Gomes.
Clarke received one shot in the face, one to the stomach, three to the right arm and 15 bullet holes to the left side of his left back, which the report said "decimated" his heart and lungs.
Gomes, who said she saw a copy of the report, told The Gleaner yesterday that the wounds in his hand appeared to be defensive injuries. He also had a cut on his forehead. Gomes said she did not receive any report that Clarke had his licensed firearm on him or fired it when he was killed.
"How can you defend something like that?" Gomes, who has pursued several cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, asked.
Call for investigation
Meanwhile, the Clarke family has called on Public Defender Earl Witter to investigate the incident urgently and thoroughly.
A letter written to the Office of the Public Defender, which The Gleaner obtained, asked for a determination into "how this brutal and unlawful event could have occurred" and to assist the Clarke family to "obtain every legal remedy available under the Constitution and the laws of Jamaica".
Keith Clarke - the brother of former government minister Claude Clarke - was fatally shot inside his house in an upscale St Andrew neighbourhood during an operation in which the security forces had gone in search of alleged drug baron Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.
Four soldiers were reportedly shot in the more-than-two-hour blitz, but neither Coke nor any of his cronies was held.
Policemen and soldiers involved Clarke's death have been taken off front-line duty.
In a joint statement released afterwards, Police Commissioner Owen Ellington and Chief of Defence Staff Major General Stewart Saunders expressed regret at the deaths of Clarke and other persons in the bid to capture Coke.