London, 10 September 2026 – The Jamaican lawyer, Bert Samuels, has said that the country has an “enormously strong” case after Jamaica filed a petition to His Majesty King Charles this week regarding enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean island for hundreds of years.

Mr Samuels, the Deputy Chairman of the National Council on Reparations, is among a group of Jamaican and United Kingdom lawyers who formulated the petition that was filed to King Charles on Monday.

“The petition is enormously strong because the questions that we are raising are backed by historical fact… Professor Verene Shepherd has provided the evidence. So it's a mix between history and law,” said Mr Samuels.

According to him, “at least eight lawyers have looked at this matter, and we think that the strength of it is the quality of lawyering that has gone into the petition.”

Mr Samuels rejected criticism from the former judge of the Privy Council, Lord Sumption, over the petition. “I think it is grossly inappropriate for any lawyer or judge who has not read the petition to comment on the petition. Why didn't he check with us to hear our view and distil our view and give his informed opinion? I think his bias has outweighed his common sense.”

Mr Samuels, who describes himself as a Pan-Africanist lawyer, said the petition was filed at the right time — one day after the 245th anniversary of the Zong massacre.

“Let us remember that in 2001, in Durban, there was a classification of transatlantic slavery as a crime against humanity…And then let us go further now to 2009, when Jamaica decided to form a reparation council, the first Caribbean territory that did that, and then move to 2015, where the parliament [gave] bipartisan support for reparation, and then to March 2026, when Ghana [and the United Nations] said that transatlantic chattel slavery is the worst crime against humanity known to humans… One day after the departure of the Zong… before the atrocity where 140 of us were thrown overboard, the timing was great. The 7th of September 2026 will go down in history as the best time for reparatory justice.”

Mr Samuels also addressed complaints over the necessity of a delegation led by the Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, to travel to London to file the petition.

“There is a huge Diaspora in England [with] Jamaicans thirsty to see that we are giving them the support and they give us the support. Secondly, we also came to go to the British Museum [where] we had to interface with those who are hosting and holding artefacts that we think belong to us. I don't think that they would take us seriously if we took up the phone to call and ask about our artefacts. We are showing them how serious we are to come here..”

Mr Samuels called for support of Jamaica’s reparations petition.

“Our minister is walking in the shoe of Paul Bogle. Paul Bogle walked with a petition from Stony Gut, 45 miles to Spanish Town, to petition Governor Eyre. Was he begging? So if we honour Paul Bogle, we have to honour this process.”

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