Gangster brother ‘assassins’ to remain in UK jails

(CNS): Caymanian gangster, brothers Osbourne Douglas(38) and Justin Ramoon(34) will remain in British jails for the foreseeable future after losing the latest leg of a long and winding legal fight to serve their life-sentences for murder back in Cayman. The brothers are serving minimum terms of over thirty years for what was described as the assassination of Jason Powery outside a George Town bar in 2015, in separate high security prisons in the UK as they were considered a national security risk.

The brothers were exiled first to HMP Belmarsh in south London because the authorities here claimed the men were still controlling the local criminal gang scene in Grand Cayman from inside HMP Northward directing killings and plotting to escape. But the brothers have denied the allegations and have challenged their enforced removal on human rights grounds as it has severed them from their families here in the Cayman Islands including their children.

In her ruling last week, Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop ruled that the governor at the time, Helen Kilpatrick, was entitled to make the decision to send the two men to the UK under the 1884 Colonial Prisoners Act. She found the governor had balanced the impact separating them from their families with the threat the authorities believe they pose to the community.

Over the protracted and complex case security issues surrounding the men has led to neither of them seeing the intelligence reports that led to them being sent to the UK because the documents were deemed to be sensitive and classified material, instead they were reviewed by a separate judge.

This security issue has however, massively hindered the men and their lawyer’s ability to make their case and fight their incarcerations in Britain. Since they were deported some six years ago the brothers have also been separated and are now serving in jails more than a hundred miles apart.

The level of security at Northward which is not equipped to house dangerous Category A inmates has also led to the judge finding that the decision was lawful.

“It was perfectly legitimate and appropriate for the Governor to consider the state of HMP Northward in the risk assessment and to conclude that it was inadequate to securely house the plaintiffs in the light of all the information,” Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop wrote in her judgment.

“I find that the interests of the children in having their fathers remain in the Cayman Islands must give way to the overwhelming weight of the interests of national security and public safety that required their removal,” the judge stated.

See the full ruling below.

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A pair of gang killers exiled to maximum security prison in the UK have lost their legal fight to come home to Cayman.

Justin Ramoon and his brother Osbourne Douglas are serving life sentences for what a judge described as the “chilling public execution” of Jason Powery in 2015 outside the Globe Bar in George Town.

They were transferred to London’s Belmarsh high-security prison in 2017 amid claims they were planning an armed jail break, and remain incarcerated in the UK.

The pair, said to be leaders of the Central Military Killers gang, was also accused of orchestrating criminal activity from prison in Cayman.

Both men dispute those claims and have challenged their removal from Cayman on human-rights grounds.