NASSAU, Bahamas (CMC) — The Bahamas Government says it does not condone the “abuse of any detainee” as it awaits the findings of an investigation into the arrest of 11 Jamaican women earlier this month.

Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell told the Parliament late Monday that he had already spoken to his Jamaican counterpart AJ Nicholson informing him that “I was not

au fait with the facts but undertook a review of the matter”.

Mitchell told legislators that he had since “spoken with the commissioner of police, and the head of section in The Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs that deals with human rights issues is continuing his review of the matter and will in due course make known to the government our findings”.

Police said that the 11 women were detained by the Selective Enforcement Team “acting on intelligence, descended on a nightclub where they met the 11 women from Jamaica, whom they suspected to be at that location for the purpose of solicitation for prostitution”.

Last Thursday, Jamaica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote to Mitchell expressing concerns that the women may have been unfairly profiled for arrest and were not afforded proper treatment while in detention.

Bahamian women’s rights groups believe the Jamaicans were victims of misconduct by officers who allegedly discriminated against them based on their nationality.

The police said last week that the women were taken into custody for their breach of the Immigration Act and that they also arrested two of the club’s managers for their breach of the Business License Act.

Mitchell said that there was an allegation of abuse made by two representatives of The Bahamas Crisis Centre about Jamaican women arrested by the police and detained.

“Those untested allegations, without hearing the other side, were published abroad including in Jamaica,” Mitchell said, adding “on this matter I end by saying that we respect the Vienna Convention and the representatives of foreign governments in this country.

“The Government does not condone abuse of any kind of detainees. It is always important however to hear the other side,” he added.

Mitchell also described as “shocking [and] callous” a statement issued by the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association (GBHRA) regarding the detention of Jamaican Mathew Sewell.

The GBHRA had criticised the Perry Christie Government over the continued detention of the Jamaican national “for the better part of a decade”.

GBHRA said that it was also appalled at the response given by Mitchell to the case of “an innocent Jamaican man incarcerated in The Bahamas for the better part of a decade.

“The last stage of Sewell’s harrowing ordeal, at the hands of …(the) Immigration Department, was indeed the result of an error: even after he was declared innocent of all charges by the courts, this poor man continued to be held for another year under an article of the Immigration Act which does not even exist.”