432 / 494
431
forces – even from as early as the pre-deployment of JDF personnel on
21 May. Coke would therefore have been both forewarned and
forearmed!
13.40.
Cogent evidence of Coke’s presence in Tivoli Gardens is
thin and inconclusive. We have only the evidence of members of the
security forces as to the contents of Intelligence Reports. Those
reports place Coke in Tivoli Gardens on the day of the operation but
there is a certain imprecision in the time lines. According to
CoP Ellington, those reports placed Coke in Tivoli Gardens at midday
and for the rest of the Monday. Moreover, according to CoP Ellington,
the Intelligence also suggested that Coke was in Tivoli Gardens on
25 May. DCP Hinds’ evidence, on the other hand, was that Intelligence
suggested that Coke escaped during the operation and he himself was
aware that Coke left the area in the afternoon of 24 May.
Maj. Williams’ unit searched the area in Java where Coke was believed
to have two houses “between 3.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m.” and they did
not find him. This timeline is problematic in the light of other evidence
given by Maj. Williams that the unit, specifically tasked to find Coke,
had withdrawn to the School by 3.00 p.m. after searching for Coke
without success. But whether it was 3.00 p.m. or 4.00 p.m., the
information given to CoP Ellington that Coke escaped “late in the
evening going into the night” was patently incorrect.
13.41.
We are bound to conclude that the Intelligence reports of
Coke’s presence in Tivoli Gardens on 24 May were wrong or, at best,
unreliable. Certainly, it is clear that Intelligence available to
CoP Ellington was wide off the mark. How could it be that Coke was in
Tivoli Gardens “for the rest of Monday” and not be located by the
security forces which had dominated two of the three sectors by
Monday evening? And it simply does not accord with commonsense