By Caribbean News Now contributor

NEW YORK, USA — Grenadians are mourning the death of lawyer Lloyd Noel, the former attorney general, who died on Monday in New York. 

Noel served briefly as acting attorney general in the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), before he fell out with government leaders and was imprisoned at Richmond Hill. He was among dozens freed after the US invasion in October 1983. 

Lloyd Noel

In 2005, Noel recalled the part played by Dominica’s prime minister, the late Dame Eugenia Charles, in the US invasion of Grenada when he had the opportunity to meet both her and the late US President Ronald Reagan at the White House in Washington DC soon afterwards.

“The late Prime Minister Charles, the late Allister Hughes, and myself, were invited to give evidence before a joint sitting of the Congress and Senate at Capitol Hill in Washington DC on the happenings in Grenada before, during, and after the Revolution, and since the rescue mission.

“Each of us gave evidence for about three hours apiece and were intensively cross-examined by members of both the Democrats and Republicans in the House. And we met in private session with the president thereafter.

“To crown it all, and more so because of Prime Minister Eugenia Charles and Allister, rather than little me, the president ordered Air Force One to take us three from Andrews Air Force Base to Dominica to drop Eugenia, to Grenada (the partly finished Point Salines) to drop Lloyd Noel, and to Piarco in Trinidad and Tobago to drop Allister — who was going to another meeting,” he wrote in one of his regular “Law and Politics” columns.

Just three years ago, Noel called on Grenadians not to forget “what we went through under the PRG, when the group seized power after the Revolution in 1979 from Eric Gairy”.

“The communist and leftist mode of government that was introduced by the New Jewel Movement had hundreds of our men and women thrown into detention at Richmond Hill Prison and Hope Vale Camp without charge or trial but simply on the allegation that they were all counter-revolutionaries; and many spent years in prison before they were released by the US-led rescue mission that was sent to Grenada by President Reagan in October 1983, after Bishop and some of his army chiefs were killed on Fort George,” he said.