Former talk-show host on the Opposition People’s United Party (PUP)’s mouthpiece, Vibes Radio; former chair of the Belize Broadcasting Authority (among other positions held under former Prime Minister Said Musa’s administrations), former columnist for official PUP organ the Belize Times as well as current contributing writer for the National Perspective; and long-standing critic and antagonist of the current Prime Minister, Dean Barrow’s administration, Glenn Tillett, was charged yesterday, Wednesday, by Belmopan police with handling stolen goods, while he was still in his hospital bed recuperating from an attack of “bad health” suffered after lockdown in the Belmopan police “pisshouse.”
Police say that they have linked Tillett, 46, of Ladyville, Belize District, to an apparent burglary of the Salvadoran Embassy in the Cohune Walk area of Belmopan this past weekend, after computer equipment believed to have been stolen from the Embassy was found at his Campus Avenue residence in Belize City.
Tillett maintains, however, that he “had no idea where this [computer equipment] came from,” and that he was “unlawfully detained and illegally charged” by police in Belmopan on Tuesday, August 2, and Wednesday, August 3.
He has maintained that the room in which the allegedly stolen equipment was found was a sort of storeroom used by various members of the family.
A few days before the search of Tillett’s home, a 35-year-old female administrative assistant of the Salvadoran Embassy had reported that her workplace had apparently been burglarized between 1:10 p.m. on July 30, 2011, and 9:00 a.m. on July 31, 2011.
The following items were reported stolen: a grey four-door 2007 Toyota Hilux, three black Acer CPU’s, two black Acer mouse devices, two black Acer keyboards, three black 19-inch Acer LCD flat panel monitors, a red and black Kodak digital camera, a grey and black Kyocera printer, a gray Hewlett Packard printer, alcohol and a post office box key.
Orange Walk police recovered the Hilux later on July 31 and detained Roaring Creek residents Tyrell and Brian Hyde and Orange Walk resident Sheldon Pascasio, who now face charges of theft.
Subsequently, a search of Tillett’s home led to the detention of Tillett and his adopted daughter, Katyce Flowers, 20. Flowers was arraigned on Wednesday in the Belmopan Magistrate’s Court on charges of handling stolen goods and released on bail of $3,000, after being detained, along with Tillett, late Tuesday and held overnight in Belmopan.
Tillett himself, on the other hand, was read his charges by Kent Martinez of the Belmopan Formation while on his hospital bed in Belmopan’s Western Regional Hospital on Wednesday morning, and is out on “station bail” pending a formal appearance in court in Belize City on September 14, 2011.
Glenn Tillett, a former editor-in-chief of the Amandala, recounted how he ended up in a Belmopan hospital bed and what transpired along the way, in an interview with Amandala this afternoon.
According to Tillett, when three police officers visited the Campus Avenue residence around 2:00 Tuesday afternoon with a search warrant requesting permission to search the premises, he agreed, feeling that there was nothing improper going on.
The officers recovered the CPU’s, mouse devices, keyboards, monitors and printers from a storage room that Tillett told us the entire family, including Tyrell Hyde (one of the Roaring Creek residents accused of carrying out the theft) uses. Tyrell, in fact, used to call the area his bedroom when he attended school in Belize City. (Tyrell Hyde is the nephew of Tillett’s common-law wife, Rhenae Nunez, and grew up with the family; Tillett told us that he does not know the other accused, Brian Hyde, personally.)
Tillett went on to recount that the officers, led by an Officer Chun, then told him that they had been called by their comrades in Belmopan regarding the items, and informed him that he would be interviewed by the investigating officers from Belmopan at the Queen Street Police Station, to which he and Katyce proceeded to go, along with the equipment.
At the station, while they waited for the investigators, Tillett contacted attorney Arthur Saldivar, who arrived shortly thereafter and left only after having received assurances from the police that his clients were only going to be interviewed by the police, and were not being detained or arrested, and after assuring in turn that his clients would cooperate.
The situation changed when the three officers from Belmopan arrived around 5:30 in the evening. Led by Kent Martinez, they spoke briefly to Chun and his fellow officers, checking the serial numbers of the recovered equipment, and then, according to Tillett, Chun looked over at Tillett and Flowers, seemingly to point them out to the Belmopan officers.
Tillett said that Martinez had his fellow officers carry out the equipment to their vehicle, and when they were done, he said to Tillett, “Let’s go, Mr. Tillett.”
Tillett said he asked where, and Martinez replied, “You’re going to Belmopan.”
Asked, “Why?” Martinez allegedly responded, “I don’t have to explain to you; you’re going to Belmopan.” When Tillett explained that he was expecting to be interviewed here in Belize City, the officer reportedly replied, “You have to prove your innocence.”
Tillett said he immediately called Arthur Saldivar on his cellular phone and was told that he, Saldivar, would be there shortly. When he told Martinez this, the officer claimed that he knew the attorney, that they were good friends, and that Saldivar could meet them in Belmopan if he wanted, since he, Saldivar, lived there, Tillett said.
Tillett went on to say that an officer, on orders of Martinez, relieved Tillett of his cellular phone, handcuffed him and put him in the pan of the pickup, despite Tillett’s protests.
After a 40-minute journey to Belmopan which Tillett describes as “high speed” and “endangering [his] life,” Martinez, in his Belmopan office, asked Tillett, “What happened?”
Tillett said he replied that the officer could not have had any questions for him in Belmopan that he could not have answered back in Belize City; the officer responded by shrugging him off, saying he could, and would, talk to him in the morning, he said.
Tillett was then taken over to the cell block, where he was stripped of his remaining possessions and tossed in a cell with five other men, including, as it turned out, Tyrell and Brian Hyde.
By this time, Tillett told Amandala, he was feeling clammy and short of breath and sweating profusely. Attorney Oswald Twist visited him and Tillett appealed to him to get him and Katyce (who had been taken to a different area) medication and medical attention for each of them – Tillett for high blood pressure and Katyce for a rare skin disease from which she suffers.
The officer on duty, a female Sergeant Joseph, said she would “do her best” when the attorney appealed to her, and shortly thereafter, Tillett was taken to the Western Regional Hospital, where, on arrival, his blood pressure reading was said to be 280 over 160, dangerously high.
Tillett was released from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon after his blood pressure was first slowly lowered, then dramatically dropped, sending him into a seizure early Wednesday morning after he was prescribed an unknown medication, before climbing back to sustainable levels.
He was read his charges later in the morning by Martinez, who, he says, refused to answer his questions as to why he was being charged.
Throughout his stay in Belmopan, Tillett maintained, he was never formally interviewed by anyone, never questioned, and never gave a formal statement to police, nor was asked for one.
Tillett told us, “There is no doubt in my mind that this case can have only one outcome. Short of legal larceny, or the provision of a kangaroo court, there is no way my daughter and I could be convicted of these charges.”
When we asked if he had spoken to Tyrell Hyde, or if Tyrell had spoken to him during the short time they were together in the cell, Tillett told us that the young man “apologized profusely” for involving Tillett and Katyce, and claimed police had held him for several days and beaten and tortured him, but insisted that he could not talk about the circumstances of the case because police were listening, and that they might use what he said against him, and that it would be dangerous for him to talk.
According to Tillett, he has not seen Tyrell since Tuesday night, and does not know what happened to him.
Tillett told us that his daughter has since told him that Tyrell came to the Campus Avenue house on Saturday evening, asking to store the equipment police later found in his old room, and telling her that he and his mother were using it for her business, producing jigsaw puzzles.
Regardless of how the case turns out, Tillett told us, he intends to pursue the matter in the courts as “a gross violation of [his] rights as a citizen” and not for “self-satisfaction.”
Referring to the case of Daniel Tillett, who died in police custody after being assaulted by an officer while he was detained for drunkenness after a National Agriculture and Trade Show several years ago, Glenn Tillett wondered whether he could not have become the second Tillett to die in similar circumstances if attorney Twist and Sgt. Joseph had not intervened.
Saldivar told reporters that in his view, there was no need for his client to be taken to Belmopan, since if any offence took place it had been in Belize City, and there was no “allegation or insinuation” that Tillett or Flowers knew of what had taken place in Belmopan.
According to Saldivar, Martinez admitted when questioned that he was acting “under instructions,” furthering their feeling that this was a “deliberate act” by authorities, since they did not take advantage of the “ample opportunity” they had to question Tillett, and since he was cooperating.
He added that ordinary citizens who are treated like this often do not have the kind of media access to tell their story like Tillett does, but insisted that “nobody should be treated the way Glenn Tillett was treated.”
Tillett told us that at least three of his cellmates showed him bruises and other evidence of alleged torture by officers; one had been detained several days earlier and appeared disoriented and unconscious of his surroundings.
Asked whether his arrest had anything to do with partisan politics, Tillett said that he could speculate about the involvement of certain politicians in his arrest, but that he would not do so and that he had made a decision to move away from partisan politics. He did allow for the possibility of a “political conspiracy” against him based on his treatment, compared to ordinary citizens.