ST. GEORGES (IPS)�Three U.S. Army pouches which may contain the remains of late Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and other notable victims of the 1983 coup that led to a U.S. military invasion have reportedly been discovered by a local mortician.

Clinton Bailey, the managing director of Otway Bailey Funeral Home, Grenada�s second-largest mortuary, told journalists the alleged remains were discovered in December, but he delayed disclosing their existence pending positive identification by forensic pathologists.

However, when he found out that the pathologists he had sought to contract would not be able to come to Grenada for up to another month, Mr. Bailey said that he and his attorney, Celia Clyne-Edwards, decided to come forward.

Ms. Clyne-Edwards added that "the nation and indeed the world has a right to know, and the families of the victims need closure."

In October 1983, at the height of an ideological and organizational dispute which had divided Grenada�s socialist People�s Revolutionary Government (PRG), Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the leader of one faction, was placed under house arrest.

A crowd led by some cabinet members and activists of the ruling New Jewel Movement (NJM) freed Mr. Bishop on Oct. 19 and marched on the operational headquarters of the People�s Revolutionary Army (PRA) at Fort Rupert.

The faction then in charge of the government, party and army dispatched a unit of armored personnel carriers to retake Fort Rupert. In the fighting that ensued, several people, including army personnel and civilians, were killed.

Maurice Bishop, Foreign Minister Unison Whiteman, Education Minister Jacqueline Creft and Housing Minister Norris Bain were then executed.

Six days later, the United States military, with token support from some Caribbean Community countries, invaded the island, removed the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) which had assumed power following Prime Minister Bishop�s execution, and arrested its leaders�including Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard.

Since then, the whereabouts of the remains of Mr. Bishop and the others executed following the retaking of Fort Rupert (since renamed Fort George) has been shrouded in mystery.

In September 1995, Bishop�s daughter Nadya led a four-member team of American scientists, including a forensic pathologist and an archeologist, on an unsuccessful search for her father�s body.

In a recent television interview, Bernard Coard, who along with 16 other RMC members is serving a life sentence for the Oct. 19 killings, denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of the bodies. He said that following their arrest in 1983, and again in 1996, he and the other RMC leaders had told the authorities everything they knew about possible location of the remains.

Mr. Coard said he had received information that the American military authorities knew where the bodies were. Nadya Bishop said she also received similar information.

"We had reports indicating that the Americans had custody of the remains at some point after the invasion," she told journalists, "but then the chain of custody is unclear."

Political sources in Grenada said in 1983 that the invading American forces and their Caribbean allies did not want a funeral for Maurice Bishop for fear it would spark massive protest demonstrations.

These sources have said repeatedly that the authorities do not want Bishop buried as his "unofficial national hero status" could turn his gravesite into a shrine to left-wing political thought.

That investigation led him to a site at a St. Georges cemetery which he would not identify, where the three U.S. Army body bags with human remains had been found.

He warned that "we cannot be totally sure that what we have discovered is in fact what we think we have," and added "we feel compelled, as a result of our findings, to relate this important information to you, so as to provide transparency in our handling of this matter."

In 1995, Nadya Bishop told reporters that her father deserved a proper resting place. "He deserves to be shown some respect. He deserves to be laid to rest with some dignity and not be left in some hole with anonymity," she said.