‘Medz Boss’ finally out of detention

Dance­hall artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Ol­liviere was re­leased from cus­tody on Fri­day night af­ter his at­tor­neys suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

His at­tor­ney, Criston J Williams, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Ol­liviere was freed around 7 pm, fol­low­ing a two-stage process in­volv­ing a tri­bunal and the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for ex­er­cis­ing dis­cre­tion over his de­ten­tion.

Ol­liviere was charged with il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ing elec­tric­i­ty.

Williams ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der for ex­er­cis­ing that dis­cre­tion.

How­ev­er, he raised con­cerns over what he de­scribed as an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror by the prison ser­vice which de­layed Ol­liviere’s re­lease.

Williams ex­plained that Ol­liviere’s de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) had been re­voked and he ought to have been re­leased on Au­gust 24. How­ev­er, prison records in­di­cat­ed that he was still be­fore the court on a mat­ter for which he had no bail.

The is­sue was clar­i­fied when Ol­liviere ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice Ger­ard Abra­ham, where it emerged that Mas­ter Shah had grant­ed him bail in 2024.

— An­drea Perez-Sobers