Reneto Adams, 5 former colleague lawmen and families, banned from US

Former tough-talking and feared Senior Superintendent of Police, the controversial Reneto DeCordova Adams, and five other cops who were part of the now -disbanded Crime Management Unit (CMU) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), along with their immediate family members, have been banned from entering the United States.

The former cops are among 17 officials and family members of foreign governments who have been blacklisted for what United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has described as “gross violations of human rights”.

The Jamaicans make up the majority of those on the banned list.

The information was released on Thursday by the United States Department of State to coincide with the observance of World Human Rights Day.

“These actions reflect our ongoing commitment to disrupt, deter and promote accountability of perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses wherever and whenever they occur,” said Pompeo.

“Today, the (State) Department is announcing the public designation of 17 officials of foreign governments and their immediate family members under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act 2020, as carried forward by the Continuing Appropriations Act 2021, due to the officials’ involvement in gross violations of human rights.

“Section 7031(c) provides that in cases where the secretary of state has credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in a gross violation of human rights or significant corruption, those individuals and their immediate family members are to be designated publicly or privately, and are ineligible for entry into the United States,” added Pompeo.

He named Devon Orlando Bernard, Reneto DeCordova Adams, Patrick Anthony Coke, Shayne St Aubyn Lyons, Leford Gordon and Roderick Anthony Collier “for their involvement in gross violations in human rights in Jamaica”.

While Adams was in charge of several police operations that resulted in the loss of lives, but was never convicted of committing a crime, the State Department appeared to have been referencing an incident in Kraal district in Clarendon, where members of the Adams-led CMU were implicated in the controversial killings of two women and two men in 2003.

The law enforcers had gone to Kraal in search of Bashington ‘Chen Chen’ Douglas, a reported high-level gangster. Douglas survived a reported shootout then, but was shot dead some three years later.

Following a long period of public outcry and amid continued accusations of extra-judicial killings, Adams and five other cops were charged with non-capital murder after a ruling by the Director of Public Prosecutions. At the conclusion of a much publicised trial in the Home Circuit Court, the men were freed in December 2005, but the CMU disbanded shortly after. Following what Adams famously described as the “mother of all trials”, he left the JCF in 2008 after having been taken off front-line duties and assigned to a desk at the office of the police commissioner.

While the six cops knew from as early as 2006 that their visas had been cancelled, they, along with their immediate family members, have now been banned from entering the United States.

Meanwhile, apart from the Jamaicans, also on the banned list are José Antonio Almendáriz Rivas, who the United States said was involved in a gross violation of human rights in relation to the death of Spanish national, Dr Begoña García de Arandigoyen, on September 10, 1990 in El Salvador, and Chief Huang Yuanxiong of the Xiamen Public Security Bureau Wucun Police Station for his “involvement in gross violations of human rights in Xiamen, China”.

source: loopjamaica