First Wave Movement demands charges against Kaia Sealy be dropped

The First Wave Move­ment has con­demned the crim­i­nal charges laid against Ka­ia Sealy, de­scrib­ing the pros­e­cu­tion as “a trav­es­ty of jus­tice” and call­ing for the im­me­di­ate with­draw­al of the charges.

In a state­ment, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s founder and leader, Umar Ab­dul­lah, re­ject­ed le­gal ar­gu­ments made in a re­cent ar­ti­cle dis­cussing the case, say­ing the rea­son­ing ad­vanced was “legal­ly un­sound, fac­tu­al­ly in­con­sis­tent and dan­ger­ous­ly mis­lead­ing to the pub­lic.”

The move­ment ar­gued that at­tempts to hold Sealy re­spon­si­ble for the death of Sama­roo were based on a “dis­tor­tion of crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty.”

Ref­er­enc­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions un­der Sec­tion 4 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the group said li­a­bil­i­ty for the shoot­ing could not be trans­ferred to a vic­tim of al­leged state vi­o­lence.

“The crim­i­nal act was com­mit­ted by po­lice of­fi­cers who dis­charged firearms,” the state­ment said. “Sealy, paral­ysed by po­lice bul­lets, can­not be legal­ly con­strued as the cause of Sama­roo’s death.”

The move­ment al­so cit­ed the le­gal doc­trine of novus ac­tus in­ter­ve­niens, ar­gu­ing that the po­lice’s al­leged dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of force broke any causal chain that could con­nect Sealy to the fa­tal shoot­ing.

It ref­er­enced the 1995 UK case R v Clegg, in which sol­diers were held ac­count­able for un­jus­ti­fied shoot­ings, say­ing the prin­ci­ple es­tab­lished that state agents could not es­cape li­a­bil­i­ty by shift­ing blame to civil­ians.

The state­ment fur­ther ac­cused the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) of un­der­min­ing the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence by pur­su­ing charges against Sealy in­stead of the of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing.

The group al­so raised con­cerns about the ev­i­dence in the case, claim­ing CCTV footage showed Sama­roo with his hands out­side the ve­hi­cle in sur­ren­der and al­leg­ing there was no ev­i­dence Sealy fired at po­lice.

It ques­tioned the ab­sence of a dis­closed firearm or gun­pow­der residue re­port and crit­i­cised the de­lay in pro­duc­ing foren­sic find­ings, say­ing the four-month wait raised sus­pi­cions and de­mand­ed trans­paren­cy.

The move­ment al­so ar­gued that the of­fi­cers who dis­charged firearms should in­stead face charges un­der Sec­tion 12 of the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act.

It fur­ther al­leged breach­es of in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards gov­ern­ing the use of force by law en­force­ment, cit­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Ba­sic Prin­ci­ples on the Use of Firearms by Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials, which re­strict lethal force to sit­u­a­tions in­volv­ing im­mi­nent threats.

Among sev­er­al ques­tions raised, the or­gan­i­sa­tion asked why Sealy had been charged in­stead of the of­fi­cers who fired the shots, why the foren­sic re­port had not been made pub­lic, and whether con­sul­ta­tions be­tween the DPP and po­lice com­pro­mised pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al in­de­pen­dence.

The move­ment al­so crit­i­cised pub­lic com­ments al­leged­ly made by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, claim­ing they prej­u­diced the mat­ter.

The First Wave Move­ment is now call­ing for:

• ↓the im­me­di­ate with­draw­al of charges against Sealy;

• ↓an in­de­pen­dent foren­sic au­dit by ex­ter­nal ex­perts;

• ↓the pub­lic re­lease of foren­sic re­ports and ex­hibits;

• ↓crim­i­nal charges against the of­fi­cers in­volved;

• ↓a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry in­to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al in­de­pen­dence; and

• ↓com­pen­sa­tion for both Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly and Sealy.

“The law is clear: vic­tims of po­lice vi­o­lence can­not be scape­goat­ed to shield of­fi­cers from ac­count­abil­i­ty,” the state­ment said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion urged cit­i­zens, civ­il so­ci­ety groups and Par­lia­ment to re­ject what it de­scribed as “a dan­ger­ous prece­dent” that un­der­mines con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and pub­lic trust in the jus­tice sys­tem.