…acquitted treason accused tells her story
…says Rohee gave instruction for 23hrs of solitary confinement per day

FORMER treason accused, Carol Ann Munroe, has alleged that instructions for her to be placed in solitary confinement for 23 hrs a day, in a 10× 24 cell, with just a hole in the door to only see straight ahead, were given by former Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee.

In addition, Rohee, she said recently on Benschop’s Radio Programme, Straight Talk, also gave instructions that she be shackled by both hands and feet for court; an act, according to human rights, should not be meted out to women.

Carol Ann’s horror story of 15 months, five days behind bars was shared along with her husband’s, Major (ret’d) Bruce Munroe, whose equal stint on remand, was done at the Camp Street Prison.

Protocols on how an army official must be treated in the case of arrest were not followed and Bruce was forced to live in a bug-infested dorm, among persons with tuberculosis and chickenpox. He eventually contracted the latter.

In the harrowing revelations of their time on remand, Munroe related that she spent the first night at the prison in an open dorm, then she was told to pick up all her belongings the second night, as ‘they were instructed that she must be by herself’.
This, she thought, would have been a good thing, until her worst fear as a claustrophobic individual became a reality.

“Twenty-three hours per day lock down, an hour for my bathing, to get something to eat, to sit outside and have some sun, not with anyone, no association, no TV, no newspaper, no nothing. I was in a fix 10 ×24,” she said. She was given two potties for excrement that were only emptied when she was let out and her vanity was two small boxes.

“I would not wish my circumstances on a dog, not a worse criminal.” All of her documents were screened and even a page torn out of her Bible if she wanted to keep a journal. She was paraded in an orange suit for any external visits such as the hospital while also shackled hands and feet. For this, even when she was sick, she kept to herself to save herself the embarrassment. Her treatment was so inhumane, that she was anxious to travel to Georgetown for court hearings, where she would stay at the East La Penitence lock-ups.

LESS WORST

“I use to pray to come to Georgetown because I would rather come and sleep on the cold tile floor at La Penitence, where I can at least get some sunlight than to be in Berbice on a mattress, because there was no light, just a thin bulb outside,” she related.

At the lock-ups, she related in a letter to the editor, “I slept on the tiles and concrete of a dirty lock-up floor, on a few sheets or newspaper, a couple pieces of clothing or my bath towel as a bed. To bathe with a two-litre bottle of water or cranberry juice bottle of water brought by my mother twice per day. To be kept in an area, built for a vault, a dim, maybe 20-watt bulb, which hardly provided any light to an area without any form of ventilation or natural lighting. In an environment where there was hardly any running water, and the toilets overflowed with filt and a floor where water had lodged and ringworm had found themselves a place to live.”

It was prayers that kept her and her husband through this experience. During those long hours, that became days, then months, then a year, going to two, the Munroes prayed and prayed that this too shall pass, as she first reassured her husband, upon hearing of the charge of treason.

Carol was removed from the cell she was in after a visit in July to the Prison by members of an external organisation, who made it clear that her circumstances were inhumane. It was around that time she first got to see her two children as well.

At one of her court hearings, the magistrate also ordered that she does not return to court shackled like a condemned criminal, despite being told by officers of the political directorate.

Over at Camp Street, Munroe’s treatment was somewhat better, as he related, he was given the respect from junior GDF ranks who were stationed there. One of those was Deputy Director of Prisons, Kevin Pilgrim.

After 15 months in prison, the Munroes, along with another accused friend of theirs, Leonard Wharton, were all freed of the charge and praised God for his glory, freeing them from a life of horror.