Troy Greene, the alleged hit-man in the 2010 murder of Hague hairdresser Bibi Saymar, was yesterday freed after a High Court jury found him not guilty of the offence.
“Thank you,” he told the jurors as the shackles were removed from his wrists and ankles in the courtroom of Justice Navindra Singh.
Saymar was stabbed to death in 2010 at her Hague, West Coast Demerara home. Greene, along with Saymar’s husband Dennis Persaud, were charged with the murder but Persaud was later released after there was insufficient evidence to link him to the murder.
Yesterday, after two hours of deliberation, the jury exited their chamber and announced a verdict of not guilty. In the trial, a caution statement was the only evidence that the prosecution had linking Greene to the killing.
However, defending himself in an unsworn statement from the prisoner’s dock on Thursday, Greene told the court that he had no knowledge of the murder and that he was coerced into signing the caution statement.
Greene stated that after his arrest on May 29, 2010, he was carried to a police station and placed in a room and then being beaten. “They ask me who tek the girl life and I said, I don’t know what you are talking about,” he told the jurors. Again, he said, he was beaten and tossed into a cell alone.
He said he was beaten several times again before he gave in and signed a document which led to him being charged with murder. “When they brought me in they didn’t even search my pants or my clothes…they concentrated on beating me,” he stated.
His attorney, Peter Hugh, had disputed the assertion by the prosecution that the caution statement was freely given by Greene, arguing that prior to the caution statement, there was no evidence implicating Greene in the stabbing, injury and death of Saymar.
A police witness had told the court that he took Greene’s caution statement, and had held a confrontation between Persaud and Greene at the Leonora Police Station about the murder. The witness stated that Greene had said that Persaud called him on his cellular phone and offered him US$1,500 to go to the couple’s home along with one “Shane Simon” to kill Saymar. In the alleged caution statement, Greene stated that he was picked up by Simon at Market Road, East La Penitence and taken to the couple’s home, where he “stab up” Saymar several times about her body.
Saymar died of shock and haemorrhage caused by multiple stab wounds.
