A Justice in the court of appeal on Friday questioned whether the supreme court had the right to order the government to return Jean Rony Jean Charles to The Bahamas even without Bahamian citizenship.
Appeal Court Judge Sir Michael Barnett said he struggled to see how Justice Gregory Hilton could have ordered the government to return Mr Jean-Charles from Haiti.
His struggle he says is because Mr. Jean- Charles is not a citizen of The Bahamas.
In response to this, attorney Fred Smith, QC, submitted that he could not accept that his Mr. Jean- Charles is an alien, mainly because he was born here and did not break any immigration laws.
Mr. Smith said he isn’t a citizen, but he’s not an alien either and that a child born in The Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents should not have to pay for their parent’s sins. He submitted that a child’s status must stand alone in relation to the constitution.
He further explained that there is a group of people in The Bahamas that fall under this category that he categorizes as being ‘citizens waiting’.
He said that Mr. Jean- Charles or any one born in The Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents but fail to apply for citizenship before the age of 19 should be allowed to stay in the country and no be repatriated without due process.
The reason for this Mr. Smith said is because they did not break any immigration laws.
To the issue of identity, Mr. Smith submitted that evidence brought to court today contained Mr. Jean- Charles’ signature with the birth date 3 years after the birth date that’s on his birth certificate.
Mr. Smith however could not give an explanation as to why the date of birth on this document and the date of birth on Mr. Jean- Charles’ birth certificate were different from that document that he signed.
However, after a long day of debating, Mr. smith requested that the court be adjourned as everything could not be completed in that day, as a result trial is set to resume on July 27th.
In February this year Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hilton granted a partial stay to Jean Rony Jean-Charles which released the government from his order to grant the him status pending its appeal of his judgement.
Mr. Justice Hilton found that Mr Jean-Charles was “unlawfully expelled” from the Bahamas after having been detained at the CRDC from September 18 to November 24, 2017 in breach of his rights guaranteed under Article 25(1) of the Constitution.
