Kevin Brown examines evidence and property returned to him at his attorney's office in the United States after he was released from custody on June 15. - Contributed

WESTERN BUREAU:

"God nah gi yuh no more than you can bear."

That's what Kevin Christopher Brown said after spending 14 months behind bars for attempting to carry bomb components aboard an Air Jamaica flight in Orlando, Florida, last April.

Brown's cousin, Alecia Gooden, the relative he was on his way to spend his vacation with in Jamaica on that fateful April Fool's Day, said those were his words of salvation when she spoke with him yesterday, three days after he was released from jail.

Spending day with son

Come Father's Day, this Sunday, the United States Army veteran and Jamaican will join many other parents around the world in celebrating the special day with his five-year-old son, Karione.

"He has not seen his son in 14 months and, for a man who has lost both parents, his mother who was murdered five years ago and his father, that must have been extremely difficult for him," said Gooden.

Brown, who holds a green card, was charged in a US Federal Court for attempting to bring an explosive or incendiary device on an aeroplane, could have faced up to 30 years in prison, his attorney, Wayne Golding, told The Gleaner.

Golding said, however, that his client was innocent of the crimes for which he was charged.

Golding is convinced that it was the heightened security measures at international airports that caused officials to react as they did.

He said Brown actually had two miniature bottles of fuel for a 'remote race'. Though that in itself is an offence, Golding said the maximum penalty should have been a year in prison.

Charges couldn't be proven

In this case, it took the US prosecutors 14 months and a number of experts from both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Brown's own team to have him freed before his trial date, which was set for June 30.

"The charges that were put on him could not be proven," Golding argued.

Brown's stay in jail was not easy in the beginning, said his lawyer, as he was treated as a terrorist and placed in squalid conditions with no windows in his cell. The lights in the cubicle in which he was kept were left on for 24 hours a day, he slept on the floor with a sponge as bed and was confined to his cell 23 hours per day.

It was the intervention of the Jamaican Consulate in Florida that helped to ease his burden.

"Former Consul Ricardo Allicock and his deputy, Vance Carter, visited Brown and made sure he was not kept under those conditions," Golding revealed.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com