Stephen Lawrence’s father is “appalled” by the decision to have his son’s body exhumed in Jamaica and returned to the UK, 31 years after he was murdered.
This comes after Stephen’s mother, Doreen Lawrence, said the family had initially planned to bury him on the Caribbean island but decided to “bring him home closer to us” because they felt he “would not rest in peace in this country”.
But Dr Neville Lawrence said he was not informed of the decision to exhume his son’s body and only found out after being shown footage of the damage to his son’s grave.
He said: “I have no intention of leaving my son’s body in a dirty state after it has been exhumed.”
“Stephen was resting peacefully in Jamaica but has now been disturbed and taken from what I believed to be his final resting place. I am appalled that my son’s grave has been vandalised in this way and left in such a terrible state. I will not take my son back to the place where he was murdered.”
But he said he was confident his son’s legacy would live on, adding that he reaffirmed “my commitment to keep fighting until justice is achieved for my son.”
Lawrence was murdered by a gang of racists as he waited for a bus with his friend Duwayne Brooks in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993. Of the five or six people responsible for his murder, only two have ever been sentenced.
The initial police investigation into the 18-year-old’s death was marred by allegations of institutional racism, incompetence and corruption within the Metropolitan police.
Years after the initial police investigation, it emerged that undercover officers had been spying on activists supporting the Lawrence family’s demand for justice.
