ST GEORGE'S, Grenada (CMC):
TWENTY-TWO YEARS after he was killed in a palace coup, the mother of slain Grenada Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, is still calling on the authorities to release her son's body to her for a proper burial.
"Every time I ask why can't I get a word about my son's body, they saying to forgive. But I am saying how can I forgive when I don't have results about my son," Alimenta Bishop, 90, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
"Every year I get upset about the same thing," she said, noting that even Jesus Christ, when he was crucified, "his mother was able to get his body to bury, but when I ask what happened to my son, nobody would tell me".
Bishop, whose left wing People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) came to power in 1979 after successfully overthrowing the then administration of Sir Eric Gairy, in the English-speaking Caribbean's first-ever coup, was killed four years later as a result of infighting within the PRG.
Bishop's deputy, Bernard Coard and his wife, Phyllis, as well as a number of others, are now serving life sentences for the murder of the Prime Minister and other members of his Cabinet on October 19, 1983. Bishop had been killed shortly after his supporters had freed him from house arrest.
The infighting among the PRG members allowed for a United States-led intervention at the request of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.
Mrs. Bishop told CMC that while she had been told by "schoolchildren" then that her son had been released, she never realised he would have been killed on that fateful day.
"I did not know he would have been killed. I was not able to see him again or hear a word from my son about what happened," she said, adding that she would be marking the 22nd anniversary of the occasion by holding a "house mass for my son and those killed with him".
Mrs. Bishop, whose husband was also murdered, said that at least she had been able to get the body for a burial.
"I could go to the grave and say this is the sport where my husband is buried, but I can't say that for my son."
"Some say he got so (many) shots they had to scoop up his body but I can't tell you I know exactly what's wrong. The only thing I know is that he was taken out of house arrest."
