St George's, Grenada - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Grenada has recommended that the infamous "Grenada 17," jailed following the coup of 1983, should be given a new trial.

The report, submitted to Parliament Tuesday after five-years, calls for the government to give the prisoners "a fair trial, regardless of the outcome."

"....Having regard to the need for both victims of wrong doing and the alleged wrong doers to feel satisfied that justice is done to their respective causes for reconciliation to take palce.... The commission would prefer to see the State provide an appropriate opportunity for the "Greenada 17" to access existing or established Courts within the legal system and which would studiously ensure the process of fair trail, regardless of the outcome", said the commission in one of its recommendations.

The 17 - Bernard Coard, Selwyn Strachan, General Hudson Austin, Ewart Layne, Liam James, Leon Cornwall, Dave Bartholomew, John Ventour, Phyllis Coard, Colville McBarnette, Christopher Stroude, Lester Redhead, Calistus Bernard, Cecil Prime, Andy Mitchell, Vincent Joseph and Cosmos Richardson - were found guilty in 1986 of murdering then Prime Minister Maurice Bishop during the bloody coup that led to the U.S. invasion.

They have maintained their innocence and claimed the trial was flawed. A 1991 appeal was rejected and Coard and four others were set to be executed but an international appeal led to the postponement and then to the commuting of the death sentences to life imprisonment.

Amnesty International, in 2003, called the 17, "the last of the cold war prisoners" and said the "trial was unfair, (and) was inherently unreliable as a mechanism to establish the true facts of the events of 19 October 1983."