Maurice Tomlinson
KINGSTON, Jamaica – The seventh witness in the Tivoli Gardens Enquiry, Maurice Tomlinson, this morning, said that he was badly beaten by the members of the security forces and threatened with death on May 24, 2010, “for no apparent reason”.
Tomlinson told the Enquiry that he was taken from his mother’s house and away from his children and wife and brought to an area where he saw bodies and was told to run. He said that he knew the men he saw dead to be “innocent youth”.
According to the witness a soldier told colleagues not to kill him here because his mother was in viewing distance.
He said that he was leaving that area when another set of soldiers pushed him into a yard and began beating him until he collapsed to his knees.
There, he said, a gun was put to his head and a soldier gestured to another to kill him. He said that he managed to escape and run from the yard, but was knocked out cold by another soldier.
He told the Enquiry that his wife was also beaten after she protested their treatment of him.
Tomlinson said he woke up at the apartment block from where he was taken, and along with other men, was transferred to the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) headquarters where he was again assaulted.
He said he was released from the JDF four days later.
Paul Henry
