Drawn-out account makes for long, tedious day

THE COURT now has two irreconcilable accounts of what happened between the police and Avinash Treebhoowoon in the days after he was arrested over Michaela McAreavey’s killing.

For three hours yesterday, Chief Insp Luciano Gerard, one of the most senior detectives working on the case, stood and listened to a defence lawyer slowly, methodically itemise each of the threats and beatings his client claims he received while in his custody.

Insp Gerard, a thick-set, softly-spoken man, responded confidently to each charge, his replies (“No, my lord”, “That is unfounded”) growing so repetitive that the judge eventually had to ask defence counsel to speed up the questioning.

Treebhoowoon claims the police accused him of involvement in the murder from very early on. After his arrest at Legends Hotel on January 11th – the day after the killing – he says he was brought to a police 4x4 in the car park and “brow-beaten” by officers.

“This never happened, my lord,” Insp Gerard interjected.

On reaching the police station at the town of Piton, said the lawyer, Sandeep Teeluckdharry, his client was dealt two slaps on the face.

“No, my lord.” An officer took an empty Coca-Cola bottle, held it by its neck and hit him three times on the head. “Never, my lord.” Officers plunged his head into a bucket of water. “I say again, my lord, that is totally false.”

And so it went on. The memory of Treebhoowoon’s confession of involvement in the murder was fresh in the minds of everyone in court yesterday – it had been read out in its entirety on Wednesday. The younger of the two defendants claims he made that confession and signed it under duress – and this was his account of what made him do it.

At one point, he says, three officers made him take off his clothes and lie on a table in the kitchen at the head office of the Major Crime Investigation Team (MCIT) in Port Louis. One officer held his legs while another beat his soles with a plastic pipe.

“Never, my lord,” said Insp Gerard calmly. “It was a murder case. We knew that we had to bring the suspect the next day before a court of law.” A few feet to the detective’s right sat the two defendants, Treebhoowoon and Sandip Moneea. They stared across the court, as always, taking in the evidence and studiously ignoring one another.

His client cried, Teeluckdharry said. At one point he vomited blood. His ear hurt so badly he had trouble hearing. “No, my lord. For me he was physically fit,” came the reply.

The step-by-step account from Teeluckdharry was so drawn-out that at one point prosecution counsel Mehdi Manrakhan broke in. “Can he go faster? We are going to be here next year if this goes on.” Now and then, Insp Gerard would argue that an accusation couldn’t be true.

He could not have punched Treebhoowoon in the stomach in a police van when they stopped in the town of Pamplemousses because he was in the passenger seat – and, in any case, that town would not normally be on their route.

Treebhoowoon couldn’t have been ordered to take a bath at the MCIT head office because they don’t have a bath there. And they don’t have a bucket at the office either. Some of Treebhoowoon’s claims concerned Insp Gerard directly. He says the detective told him his parents would be “locked up” and even that his wife would be sent to Ireland.

“This man, his wife is dead,” Treebhoowoon claims Insp Gerard told him, referring to John McAreavey “He will need a woman to live with. That’s why we will take away your wife, take her passport and send her to Ireland to live with the husband. We will do this because the government is in our hands and no one can touch us.”

Yesterday was one of the hottest days in court so far. The attendance hasn’t dropped off, and the packed courtroom can grow intolerably stuffy by mid-afternoon. At 3.30pm, Judge Prithviraj Fecknah stopped Teeluckdharry in his tracks. “I think it’s time we called it a day.” They would have to talk about “the time-frame of the case”, the judge added. The trial was originally due to take two weeks. At this rate, it could be two months.