The Eric Gairy stronghold of Mt Rich in St Patrick was targeted by the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) with many of his supporters being arrested and held in custody as political detainees.

THE NEW TODAY understands that a total of 76 people from the Mt. Rich/Mt. Reuil area was arrested during the 1979-83 rule of the island by Maurice Bishop and his People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG).

Some of the detainees have been giving an account of their ordeal at the hands of some army officers.

A brother of former Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, a former detainee himself, was taken into custody, placed in handcuffs and a chainsaw had to be used to eventually free him from the device.

A most telling case was someone by the name of “Mano” who is now farming in Mt Rich.

 “Mano” whose real name is Adrian Alexis, is the brother of current Congress political activist Dawnley Alexis in the St Patrick area.

This is the account given by “Mano” about the cruelty received at the hands of the PRA: –

“On April 18th 2010 we were able to meet Adrian Alexis aka ‘Mano’, in Hermitage. He is from the Mt. Rich area and Mikey had told me that he wanted to speak to me.

We met him at a bridge in Hermitage and we sat in my parked car and talked. He has Rasta locks covered with a cap. He sounded articulate and intelligent. I took an immediate liking to him.  He is of fairly small stature; slightly built.

To begin with he told us that a total of 76 people from the Mt. Rich/Mt. Reuil area were arrested by the PRG.  (I heard from others accounts of people in that district leaving their homes to sleep in the bush because of the reign of terror carried out by the PRA.  This they euphemistically referred to as “mopping up operations.”)

Of these 76 two were babies (from the Pascall family) a few months old, taken along with their mothers.

Adrian was arrested when he was 19 years old by Denny McQueen.  As it happened, Adrian had recently been driving a Land Rover which had capsized, leaving him with an injured wrist.  As he himself described it, “Flesh eat out” of his wrist.  At the time of his arrest, it was just beginning to heal.

Despite that, Adrian was handcuffed, which he described as spiteful.  The only reason he could think of as to why they would arrest him is because Glenn Simon or Ayube was his first cousin.  He remembers that when Ayube and Habib were shot in their sleep by the PRA around 12 noon he went to see their bodies by the roadside. After that he was arrested.

O.C. Glen Moses of Sauteurs PRA camp came and placed Adrian standing against a coconut tree trunk, with his arms above his head and handcuffed behind the trunk.

The agony of the handcuffs biting into the wound was unimaginably terrible, and Adrian was made to endure it for two and a half hours. Although Adrian begged the soldier left guarding him to unlock the handcuffs from around the tree, the soldier told him he could not or he would get into big trouble from O.C. Glen Moses.

Then this soldier was relieved by another called Patchy from Mt. Craven. When Adrian begged him to let him out of his agonizing position this soldier unlocked the handcuffs.  But when he did so, Adrian’s arms fell to his sides, completely useless.

The soldier then took his hands and locked them behind the tree without them being above his head, which was a huge relief.

However, after a while the soldier took pity on him and released him from the tree altogether. Adrian says that today, he would do anything for that soldier who showed him mercy.

But then Tan Bartholomew arrived and put Adrian back on the coconut tree.

Glen Moses also gave orders that Adrian should be hung up by his hair.  He did this three times.  The first time was 1 ½ hours, the second time 2 hours and the third time ½ an hour. Again, it was Patchy who took him down.

On 4th December 1980 Gerald Romain aka ‘Jango’ who was a policeman in C.I.D., gave Adrian 36 lashes with a bull pistle (the dried, stretched penis of a bull).  As the lashes continued unabated, Adrian said to Romain, “Kill me” At that, Adrian received a lash across his eyes, and said that he then saw the brightest light he has ever seen.

Adrian stressed all the time the gratuitous cruelty of his captors.  For example, they would handcuff five prisoners together, so that when one had to go under the cocoa to shit, the others had to go too.

There was no chance of wiping your bottom. Then when they were given food, the next man’s hand had to come up next to your mouth each time you ate. Since all were eating at the same time, the result can be imagined. Only the two men at each end of the chain had one hand free. At night if one got up to pee, all had to get up.

Then Adrian was uncuffed and received two blows from a gun butt.  But he was told to run and he did. Only when a woman witness told him he had received a blow to his head, did he put up his hand to feel, and found, instead of a bump, a crater.

On 29th November 1981 he was re-arrested and sent to Richmond Hill Prison, where he spent over two years.  One day a soldier poured kerosene on his hair and asked another soldier for matches, who said he didn’t have any. In the end his hair was not set alight.

Then one night a soldier named Finton, from Victoria, said to Adrian, “Open your mouth.”

Adrian explained that at that time he was so afraid of being killed that he obeyed any order.  As soon as he opened his mouth the soldier stubbed a lighted cigarette out on his tongue.

After the revolution came to an end Adrian saw Finton in the street and confronted him, saying, “You out you cigarette on me tongue!” Finton replied: “Ras, if I did that to you, is because we mind was not we own during them times.”

Adrian said he always tells people that it’s wrong to tell lies about the revolution as there are so many true things that are quite bad enough, therefore there is no need to invent any.”