Strachan denied U.S Visa

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Parent Category: Nov 2011

Category: Week ending Nov 12th, 2011

Published on Saturday, 12 November 2011 23:27

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Former Grenada Mobilisation Minister under the 1979-84 Grenada Revolution, Selwyn Strachan has been denied an entry visa to the United States.

 Informed sources told THE NEW TODAY newspaper that Strachan had applied to U.S officials for a visa to enter the United States en route to Madrid, Spain to attend an international conference but was rejected by the Americans.

 According to a well-placed source, the entry visa was not given on the grounds that Strachan was one such person who was not entitled to get a visa to enter the United States or any of its territories.

 The fiercely anti-American critic reportedly tried to gain entry to pass through the United States to attend an international conference against the imposition of the death penalty.

 Grenada was also represented at the conference held last month by local attorney-at-law, Anselm Clouden, who has often called for the abolishment of the death penalty from the Grenadian law books.

 The source said that Strachan was invited to take part in the conference since he was once a prisoner on death row following his conviction for his part in the 1983 murder of Maurice Bishop, the late Prime Minister of the leftist People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG).

 Bishop was executed on Fort Rupert by a rival faction within his then ruling New Jewel Movement (NJM) party for control of the revolutionary process in the Spice Isle.

 Strachan was considered as one of the top leaders of the other faction that was allegedly headed by former Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard.

 In an emulation address to soldiers who took part in the shooting-to-death of Bishop, the former Mobilisation Minister praised them for the mission that was undertaken and accused the former Prime Minister of joining with “bourgeois elements” in the private sector to liquidate the NJM leadership.

 Strachan has also continued to maintain that the United States had mounted an illegal invasion of Grenada to topple and arrest and help bring to trial the coup leaders against Bishop.

 After being on death row for years, the convicted former government and military leaders were eventually released from prison in 2007 following a retrial sentencing that concluded that they had spent sufficient time in prison.

 Strachan is the most senior PRG official known to have applied to U.S authorities for an entry visa after the collapse of the Grenada Revolution.

 Trade unionist, Chester Humphrey who was a senior member of the NJM, has approached the Tillman Thomas-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to try and solicit an American visa for him.

 It is not clear whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had made the necessary diplomatic approaches.

 Humphrey had fled the United States in 1980 while awaiting trial along with another Grenadian, Jim Wardally on charges of gun-running in connection with the ferreting of arms and ammunition into Grenada to help NJM topple the elected Eric Gairy government on March 13, 1979.

 After the U.S-led invasion, he was arrested by Grenadian authorities but released by a local court, which ruled that the charges were time-barred and he could no longer be extradited from his homeland to the United States.

 Since then, the President-General of the powerful Technical and Allied Workers Union (TAWU) who was on hunger strike while in jail, has avoided flying close to U.S airspace for fear of being picked up by law enforcement officials.

 Speculation is rife that Humphrey’s bid to seek a U.S entry visa is aimed at testing Washington’s position and attitude towards him.

 A former high-level official at the U.S State Department had confided in a local reporter several years ago that the file on Humphrey has virtually been closed by the United States on the gun-running charges.

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