Brown admits giving MPs and media incorrect information about risk status of Uighurs
By Sam Strangeways
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Former Guantanamo detainees, left to right, Abdulla Abdulqadir, Ablakim Turahun, and Salahidin Abdulahat pray in the courtyard of the the cottage where they are staying.
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Premier Ewart Brown admitted yesterday that he erred in telling MPs and the media that the four Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay had been deemed a "zero" security risk by Bermuda's Police Commissioner.
Dr. Brown told the House of Assembly he discovered the information he gave about the former terror suspects a week ago was incorrect when he repeated it on a radio talk show on Sunday and received an immediate e-mail from the Commissioner.
He said his remarks on the security threat posed by the Chinese Muslims were based upon "advice I had received following a briefing the Commissioner had provided to my colleague, the Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Housing".
But the Premier did not explain why that advice appears to have been so at odds with information later issued by Commissioner George Jackson, who said on Tuesday that a preliminary assessment of the Guantánamo detainees found them to be a "high risk".
Dr. Brown said in the House yesterday morning that as soon as the Commissioner made him aware of the inaccuracy of his comments he advised the listening public he had been wrong.
He said: "I wish to make it abundantly clear that at no stage did I knowingly mislead this honourable House or the people of Bermuda.
"Immediately upon becoming aware of the inaccuracy of the information I had shared, I corrected it publicly. The unfortunate slew of allegations to the contrary will hopefully now cease.
"The statements were made in this honourable House and as such it is right that they be corrected in this very same forum." He added: "To err is human, to forgive divine."
Dr. Brown gave the inaccurate statement in Parliament on June 12 — a day after announcing that he had brought Abdulla Abdulqadir, Salahidin Abdulahad, Ablikim Turahun and Khalil Mamut from Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda without the UK's permission.
He reassured MPs that day: "There is absolutely no report anywhere that concludes that Bermuda is at any kind of risk. As late as this afternoon, Bermuda's Commissioner of Police, having assessed these people, told Minister Burch that he considers that there is absolutely no security risk."
At a press conference later that day, he reiterated: "Our Commissioner of Police has indicated that there is a zero security factor."
Although he says he verbally retracted the remarks on the radio on Sunday, the Premier issued no written statement until he was contacted by The Royal Gazette on Tuesday, after the Commissioner and Government House both issued press releases contradicting his claims.
Home Affairs Minister David Burch also issued a statement on Tuesday, one the Premier said yesterday he "wholeheartedly" endorsed.
Sen. Burch's statement said it was regretted that word "preliminary" was not used "when talking about the Police threat assessment in public utterances".
But he also gave no clue as to why the Premier was told that the Commissioner deemed the men to pose a zero risk, when Mr. Jackson's preliminary assessment actually concluded they were a high risk.
