Govt limits Vybz Kartel’s movement in T&T

Sturge limits Vybz Kartel’s movement while in T&T

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has or­dered that the itin­er­ary of Ja­maican dance­hall artist Vy­bz Kar­tel be cut.

In one of his first acts of busi­ness, Sturge, ac­cord­ing to a le­gal source with­in the min­istry, is pro­hibit­ing Vy­bz Kar­tel from two me­dia in­ter­views and oth­er events.

The artiste, born Adid­ja Palmer, is sched­uled to ar­rive in the coun­try on May 26 in prepa­ra­tion for his con­cert on May 31.

Ac­cord­ing to im­mi­gra­tion or­der, Sturge blanked Palmer a morn­ing ra­dio in­ter­view, a mid­day TV ap­pear­ance, and a lo­cal press drop-in on May 27.

He al­so blocked a meet and greet, a vis­it to a school or youth cen­tre, a cul­tur­al lunch with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and an of­fi­cial meet and greet on May 28.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Sturge, af­ter ques­tion­ing how Guardian Me­dia be­came aware of his or­ders, con­firmed the ad­just­ments say­ing based on Palmer’s past le­gal trou­bles he was con­cerned about him in­ter­act­ing with the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­ble youths, “par­tic­u­lar­ly as his con­vic­tion was not based on mer­it but on a le­gal tech­ni­cal­i­ty.”

He added that a de­tailed me­dia re­lease is be­ing draft­ed.

Palmer was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to per­form in T&T in Feb­ru­ary, how­ev­er, the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val was post­poned to May. 

Palmer was freed of mur­der in 2024, Ja­maica’s Court of Ap­peal ruled against retry­ing him and his co-ac­cused for the mur­der of Clive “Lizard” Williams.

Palmer, Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Camp­bell, Kahi­ra Jones and An­dre St John were con­vict­ed of the Sep­tem­ber 2011 mur­der of Williams.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the quar­tet made an ap­peal to the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal in 2020, but their con­vic­tions were up­held.