118 / 494
117
unhelpful. Apart from the evidence of SSP Hewitt and Supt. Brown,
there is a dearth of information from the JCF indicating when and
where the majority of the 86 (or 115) firearms were found.
5.80
There are two further troubling features of the evidence of
the paucity of firearms recovered in the immediate aftermath of
24 May. First, none of the young men detained by the Engineers in
Area 5 at 9.20 a.m. on 24 May and dressed in the attire attributed to
gunmen, was found with guns. Secondly, we were assured that the
searches carried out by the Engineers were thorough and conducted by
persons expert in construction matters. Moreover, the searches were
conducted jointly with the Caribbean Search Centre, an organisation
expert in conducting searches. And yet the two rounds of searches
yielded very few firearms.
5.81
There was no satisfactory evidence of where the young
men were coming from or where they were going. In respect of the
few firearms recovered by the Engineers (6 in Tivoli Gardens and 21 in
other parts of West Kingston), the inferences are equivocal. The
gunmen may have been exceptionally skillful and adept at concealing
weapons. On the other hand, the searches may have been inefficient in
revealing a larger number of firearms. On the state of the evidence, we
cannot make a definitive finding as to the reasons for the small number
of firearms recovered in the first few days after the operation.
5.82.
We also have concerns about the total numbers of weapons
and ammunition recovered in the light of Lt. Col. Ogilvie’s evidence
that between 26 May and the end of the State of Emergency extended
and expanded to 22 July 2010, a total of 75 weapons and 4,175 rounds
of ammunition were recovered in his Battalion’s (1JR) area of
operation. And of course these would have been handed over to the