UPDATE: Dr. Wayne Murray was released around 4:15 p.m., without charge, his lawyer, Vynnette Frederick has confirmed to iWitness News.
The following post appeared on his FAcebook page after his release:
“I AM FREED FROM BEING DETAINED FOR THE DAY!First I must say thank you to the every persons that gave support. The numerous lawyers, family, friends and patients whom I had to leave at the clinic without attendance.I WILL MAKE A PROPER POST TONIGHT BUT I HAVE A FEW PATIENTS THAT I MUST VISIT IMMEDIATELY!!!THANK YOU!!”
See original story below:
The physician whose family is the subject of what they have described as a “communist” land acquisition in St. Vincent and the Grenadines was taken into police custody on Tuesday.
Vynnette Frederick, a lawyer for Dr. Wayne Murray, told iWitness News round 3 p.m. that police had not brought any charges against her client and had not indicated why he was taken into custody four hours earlier.
Murray was taken into custody when detectives turned up at his clinic on Murray’s Road around 11 a.m. and told him that the Commissioner of Police, Colin John, wanted to see him at police headquarters, the lawyer said.
“Dr. Murray has been — I would like to say, detained at the Central Police Station. He is upstairs at the CID. As yet, charges have not been laid against him,” Frederick said.
She told iWitness News that she, along with lawyers Grant Connell and Kay Bacchus-Baptiste, were acting on behalf of the physician, while other lawyers who are his personal friends have also visited him.
“But, so far, no charges have been indicated to us. I am here with him in an interview room — one of the senior officer’s rooms. He is not being treated unkindly. His wife has come and been here with him and we are waiting to see what position the police are going to adopt,” Frederick told iWitness News.
“There seems to be some issue with an allegation of a post appearing on Facebook. I can’t speak to that because the police have not proffered any charges in relation to any allegation whatsoever.”
In a 23-second video, said to have been taken at police headquarters and circulated via social media, Murray is seen dressed in black medical scrubs and wearing a facemask, and blue latex gloves. He also has a statoscope around his neck.
“I’m ok, guys; just waiting and see why I am here. But I don’t except them to keep me too long. I’ll wait and see,” Murray says in the video.
Frederick said that when the detectives arrived at Murray’s clinic, they gave him “that typical line” that the police chief wanted to see him at headquarters.
“But, of course, it was an arrest because he couldn’t refuse and he sat in between police officers on his way — four police officers — and he was in between them in the back of the police vehicle. It was effectively an arrest.
“The police have this way of arresting someone. I don’t know that he was told on suspicion of what and under what legislation.
“And so, we are here, I don’t know what, if any investigations are forthcoming and I am here waiting to hear what the police are saying. Other colleagues are currently speaking to the police. And this is what it has been from 11 o’clock to now.”
Frederick said she does not know what was allegedly said in the Facebook post, adding that she had not herself seen a post on the social networking website.
iWitness News was told that the police have detained Murray as part of a cybercrime investigation.
Meanwhile, Frederick referred to the state’s compulsory acquisition of part of the Murrays’ land.
“The matter that comes to mind most strikingly in relation to the doctor and his good wife is the issue of the land belonging to the family in the Murray Village area. I have not heard from the police as to whether it (the detention) touches and concerns anything about that. And so we are waiting and I am here with him.”
Dr. Murray has been using social media Facebook amidst his on-going appeal to the Ralph Gonsalves government to resolve a situation it reported exacerbated with its forced acquisition of the lands.
He has told iWitness News that the prime minister called him and the police chief and other officer visited the area in Murray’s Village after he made a public appeal on radio last month.
The lands acquired by the state had been in Murray’s wife, Simone’s, family for 100 years and her family had been leasing portions of it for homes for decades.
However, as the family recently moved to enforce years-old court orders for the tenants to vacate the land, the government acquired an undefined portion of the land.
Mrs. Murray told iWitness News last month that even in the face of the acquisition, the government had not said which portion of the land had been acquired, beyond saying that the state was taking possession of some three acres.
The state has also not said how much it would pay the family for the land it had acquired.
Since the acquisition, Dr. Murray has said on social media that the former tenants were trespassing on the section of the land where his family’s home is located and were stealing their agricultural produce.
Theft of agricultural produce was one of the reasons that the family had given for ordering the tenants to vacate the property.
The Murrays say they want to concentrate more on agriculture, growing more of what they eat, as Mrs. Murray is a cancer survivor.
Mrs Murray has told iWitness News that some of the tenants have refused to pay for years the rent for the land, which ranged from EC$50 to EC$300 annually.
Dr. Murray has said on Facebook that when confronted about his trespassing and praedial larceny, one former tenant told him that the land no longer belonged to the Murrays.
The physician has said that the former tenants had begun to stake out parts of the land as the portion they would occupy in light of the acquisition — even in the absence of a survey plan, as required by law.
Dr Murray has been hounded for many years since he refused to go to the fatmans offices when asked to. He told fatty “you have nothing I want and I have nothing you need.”
Three weeks later the VAT, Inland Revenue and police officers raided his offices and took away all his books and records, fishing for something which they could charge him with. After keeping his books for weeks they found nothing wrong, not even a punctuation mark in the wrong place.
That was the beginning of this whole affair, the theft of the land by the government, it is based on spite and malice, just like it was for Bigger Bigs.
He has never been forgiven for refusing to do the will of the Fat Man. He has been despised and hated ever since like Cameron Balcome is now paying the price, Dr Murray has been paying the price even longer.
Step out of line and you will be destroyed, I think you will find others are now on the hate list, Jomo Thomas, and Travis Harry, they think they are safe because they are fearless, but they are not safe, far from it.
The question we must ask is was Glen Jackson punished by assassination because he stepped out of line?
https://www.facebook.com/breadfruitnews/posts/letter-assassination-in-st-vincent-and-the-grenadines-when-reading-this-letter-i/855307137871402/
A must read
Dear Kenton, is there a reason that you have not posted my message?
In this election year in SVG, let us remind ourselves of the roots to this our governing labour party in SVG, who in the world this party supports and where it gets its ideology from. But before we do so, perhaps we could start with that Video story from just a month or so ago as noted above.
Yes the one from I-Witness News. The loss of property by a Vincentian, this good Doctor’s family property. https://www.iwnsvg.com/2020/08/17/video-communist-land-acquisition-in-svg/
We all remember it and should ask, is this St Vincent? And further too, how did we get here?
Moreover, one could then ask how that story matches up with this one from Communist China. https://www.ntd.com/private-property-in-china-confiscated-overnight_505429.html Note: A financially crippled China goes back to its communist roots by taking over rich people’s private property. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAO1nFOPae8 a familiar thing with the communist.
SVG, being the 4th poorest nation in the Caribbean, the leadership of the ULP here following the grandiose delusional aspiration of the Gonsalves family, it had pushed and obtained a non-permanent two year seat on the UN Security Council, this in order to satisfy Ralph Gonsalves oversized ego while pursuing his anti-American agenda.
Moreover this while most Vincentians remains poor and sucking salt, with a large section of the people out of work. https://news784.com/local-news/iran-thanks-st-vincent-for-anti-us-stances-at-unsc/
Indeed, it is true that Ralph Gonsalves have always supported the so-called socialist regimes from across the globe, there from the repressive Cuban regime to the even more reprehensible Venezuelans. All in the name of socialist solidarity.
His support for despicable regimes and despots quite obviously knows no bounds, as his politics has had its roots in Soviet Communism. He has for sure exclaimed that he was in power to finish the work of that now dead soviet trained former communist, Maurice Bishop.
But where to now for this large old man of the pseudo-left who has not achieved any economic good for us Vincentians after near on twenty years in office? Where to?
With Ralph Gonsalves’s fellow failed pseudo-left lead economies offering him no material support because they too have failed, economies like Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and even the failed Lula lead government of Brazil, it is hard to see where this old man of the left will get his inspirational que from.
Perhaps he will just fade away while supporting like authoritarian regimes such as Iran, this as Vincentians remain jobless and sucking salt, the country begging its way around the world, thus confirming a very sad fact, that there is no fool like an old red-shirted fool and one who follows the failed alien ideology, communism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaWmqgmJxs
3acres of land for 11 house spots? . Government usually allocate 3500-4000sqft as a house spot…even with road 3 acres is excessive. Leave the Murray’s with as much land as necessary. I can only imagine the emotional toll of parting with something that has been in the family for a hundred years. Legacy down the drain. And being a cancer survivor I can understand the logic and need to control what chemical / lack thereof is ingested.
This is a tough one!!
It sounds to me like Gestapo tactics used by the Third Reich during the Second World War SVG is
becoming a strange place to live when vincentians can sit back and let the comrade and son pass a law
to tell people what they can say or can’t say on Facebook and think this is right SVG is going backwards
not forward.mr Murray you need to name all those officers involved in your arrest so they family and friends
can see what they are apart of in this country.
It is written, vengeance is Mine, says the Lord, I will repay. Be still and know that I am God.
Yncentians police system is very corrupt and retarded. A Facebook report will make this an issue to arrest a doctor to cause embarrassment to his family and patients. You all need to get that police system reform.
Vincentian police system are to corrupted. They don’t know their rare end from their Elbow. How can they arrest a doctor for some kind of Facebook write up. Foolish.
Retribution is a must. Wonder if it has started already!
Tad, it started a long time ago, I have told the story but it has been withheld from Vincentians, and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
They even had their Gestapo-esque “Brown Shirts”. Or, was it the National SOCIALIST [Nazi] “Storm Troopers”?
What did the young Senator Baptiste call the “Leader”, er . . . Mein Herr, Fuehrer [sic] – – – “COMMUNISTIC” ?
This act of expropriating the Murray ‘s property is something that every Vincentian should be concerned about. Government has a right to acquire land but it should not be an arbitrary exercise. There are specific procedures for a justified acquisition as what happen in Belmont to build a road as a result of land slippage. However, this one smells. The Murray’s should fight this unjustified acquisition in court. What would he do if squatters were to occupy his property in Gorse, the Black Squad will kick them off. The comrade is true to his Socialist philosophy in this regard.
Why is the police or government getting involved with Face book postings? I lost my initial Face book ID when I posted a video about the “Raper Man”. They told Face book I was not the person I said I was. I still have the video and may run it again for the 2020 election.