Outspoken barrister-at-law Anslem Clouden is gearing up for another confrontation with Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, Dr. Keith Mitchell.

Clouden is challenging a move made by the Grenadian leader to change some of the rules governing the operations of the Richmond Hill prisons.

In a recent gazette, it was announced that Dr. Mitchell as Minister responsible for Prisons had repealed Rules 303-306 of the Prisons Rules governing the time spent by prisoners in the institution. Legal sources told GRENADA TODAY that the proposed amendment changes the one year prison sentence which has been in existence for decades from eight months to the full 12 months.

Speculation is rife that the move is aimed at prolonging the lengthy jail sentence handed down by a high court against three revolutionary soldiers convicted for the 1983 bloody murder of marxist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop on October 19, 1983 at Fort Rupert (George).

The soldiers - Andy Mitchell, Vincent Joseph and Cosmos Richardson - are due to be released later in the year. The soldiers are among seventeen former military and political officials implicated in the slaying of Bishop and several colleagues following a bitter leadership struggle for control of the New Jewel Movement-led People's Revolutionary Government (PRG)

The source said that if the changes made by Prime Minister Mitchell takes full effect then the trio will have to spend an additional ten years behind bars. He is pointing an accusing finger at controversial Jamaican lawyer and Legal Advisor to Cabinet, Hugh Wildman as being the architect of the amendment to the Prison Rules.

"What they (the Mitchell government) are trying to do is to punish all other prisoners who would have come out early by trying to get at three prisoners", said a legal source close to the ill-fated 1979-83 Grenada Revolution.

In his objection to the move by Prime Minister Mitchell, the fiery Clouden points out that if the Grenada Parliament had intended that the power in the Minister "to make rules governing the remission of sentences" should include the power "to make rules abolishing the remission of sentences", it would have said so.

He said: "Making rules "governing the remission of sentences" is different from making rules "abolishing the remission of sentences". This is a difference not just in degree but a difference in kind or substance. "The right of the individual to liberty under the Constitution, sections 2-15, is being abrogated by the amendment", he added.

According to Clouden, the amendment to the Prison Rules by Prime Minister Mitchell "is ultra vires because it infringes on the liberty of the individual in respect of remission". "The Prime Minister acted ultra vires", he asserts.

Clouden contends that the new rules governing the time to be spent by prisoners at the Richmond Hill prison violate section 22 of the Interpretation Act this "strengthening the presumption against subsidiary legislation being retroactive, especially when negatively affecting personal liberty".

He said: "....The legitimate expectations of the individuals, in conducting themselves in prison so as to entitle them to remission, is being denied wrongfully by the Prime Minister's new rules". Clouden called for the amendment which took effect from February 2, 2006 to be struck down "for being ambiguous".