Five walk free after judge upholds no-case submission

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Af­ter spend­ing al­most two decades in prison, five men have been freed of mur­der­ing a man, whose body has nev­er been found.

Clive “Small­man” Charles, Joseph “Joe” Sam­my, Que­si “Blacks” Charles, Jaa­su “Fat Head” Gafoor and Markus “Tack” Julien were set free at the end of their tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle and a 12-mem­ber ju­ry at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

Jus­tice Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle di­rect­ed the ju­ry to re­turn with unan­i­mous not guilty ver­dicts for the men af­ter up­hold­ing a no case sub­mis­sion from their le­gal team.

In the sub­mis­sion, the group’s lawyers claimed that the State had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing them to the crime.

The men were ac­cused of mur­der­ing Qua­si Dow­ers in March 2006.

Dow­ers went miss­ing af­ter last be­ing seen sit­ting in a car at Boissiere Vil­lage, Mar­aval on March 2, 2006.

Al­though his body was nev­er re­cov­ered by the po­lice, the men were ac­cused of killing Dow­ers at the lo­ca­tion and dis­pos­ing of his body.

The men were ar­rest­ed and charged sev­er­al years af­ter Dow­ers’ dis­ap­pear­ance.

The men were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al af­ter a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry and an in­dict­ment was filed against them in 2013.

The men spent well over a decade on re­mand be­fore they even­tu­al­ly went on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle.

A sixth man, Roger “Kyo” Gee­ban was al­so ar­rest­ed and charged but died in prison while await­ing tri­al.