Doctors had to remove part of a torture victim's stomach and intestine after he was beaten and burned by several men while tied up in a cellar, a Supreme Court jury heard yesterday.

And torture-victim Dwayne Trott, 29, told the court he tried to overdose on heroin when he was released from hospital three months after the attack.

Antoine Herbert Anderson, 27, of St. Monica's Road, Pembroke, denies charges of causing grievous bodily harm and intending to burn, maim, disfigure or cause grievous bodily harm to Mr. Trott on January 4, 2001.

Anderson was originally charged in relation to the crime with three other Pembroke men - Jakai Tyrone Hartford, 22, of Mission Lane, Shaki Allen Jay Minors, 21, of Cherry Hill and John O'Donald Fox, 34, also of Mission Lane - but his three co-accused pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm charges on Monday.

“When I came out of the hospital I wanted to die,” Mr. Trott said yesterday. “I tried to overdose. I did not want to live. I prayed to God to kill me. Then I started getting into all sorts of ignorance that I am now locked up for.”

He also told the court that his own brother attacked him before he let the other men drag him into a cellar where he was burned and tortured for hours.

Mr. Trott's brother has not faced any charges in relation to the attack, however.

Anderson's lawyer Mark Pettingill asked: “What did you do to make you own brother want to put gloves on and beat you?”

“My brother's got his own issues,” Mr. Trott replied. “He beat me because I was on heroin.”

Mr. Pettingill asked why his attackers wanted to torture him.

“I never had done anything wrong to any of them,” Mr. Trott said. “I took care of them. I showed them everything I had done wrong with my life”.

But Mr. Trott said he had taken a piece of jewellery from one of the admitted attackers (Hartford) in retribution for the man's having damaged a friend's car.

“Jakai messed up a friend of mine's car,” he said. “I took his (gold) chain to show him some responsibility. His father told me to take it. I didn't steal it... I told him I took the chain and he just laughed.”

Under cross-examination by Mr. Pettingill, Mr. Trott denied that his torture had anything to do with drugs.

He said had snorted $50 worth of heroin on the day of the attack to “feel normal” but that he had been trying to wean himself off the drug at the time.

“It takes away my stomach pains and diarrhoea,” Mr. Trott said.

The cellar in which he was burned and beaten was at Jakai Hartford's house, he said.

And it was Hartford's own mother - as taxi driver Sirus Ratteray confirmed in testimony yesterday - who called for the taxi that took him to hospital after he managed to free himself from the cellar.

He said his torture has been eating away at him for the last three years.

“You just get tired,” he said.

He also said his attackers had threatened him and told him not to testify against them.

Mr. Pettingill asked Mr. Trott how he had known that Anderson had gone to John Fox's house to put a screwdriver on a stove.

“They did not put duct tape over my eyes,” Mr. Trott replied.

He denied that he had been breaking into homes in the neighbourhood and repeated his claim that Anderson had been the ringleader of the torture in the cellar.

“It was a little frenzy down there,” he said.

Also testifying yesterday was Dr. Wolfgang Spangenberger, who treated Mr. Trott at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

“Dwayne Trott was admitted to hospital after an assault on January 4, 2001,” he said. “He had two large lacerations in his stomach and another on his duodenum (or upper intestine).”

Dr. Spangenberger said there was major bruising around all the internal organs in Mr. Trott's abdomen and that three of his injuries were life threatening.

During the three months he was in hospital, Mr. Trott had three surgeries.

The first was when he was admitted, to control internal bleeding. The second was on January 17, after the internal bleeding would not stop and a third surgery took place on January 21.

“The patient vomited fresh blood,” Dr. Spangenberger said. “He was taken to the operating room. A significant amount of his stomach and duodenum (showed signs of bleeding).

“Under the circumstances, we deemed it necessary to make a partial removal.”

Acting Justice Carlisle Greaves asked the doctor whether he replaced any of the organs he removed from Mr. Trott.

“No, no,” the doctor replied. “It's gone for good.”

Due to the removal of part of his stomach, Mr. Trott will need “life-long medical attention” and has a greater risk of getting ulcers.

Mr. Trott had “severe burns of the skin” that could have been caused by someone using melting plastic, the doctor added.

Mr. Trott weighed 106.5 pounds at a check-up at KEMH on April 24, the doctor said.

Det. Con. Andrew Woolridge said yesterday that he arrested “six or seven men” in connection with the assault, including the torture victim's brother, Andre Trott, who was never charged.

Two other men, “Kareem Raynor” and another called Robinson, were “unable to be located”, Det. Con. Woolridge said.

The final witness of the day was the defendant himself.

Anderson denied any involvement in the attack and torture of Mr. Trott.

“No sir, it was not me,” Anderson said.

“I was at my house playing very loud music”.

He said there was no bad blood between them which would make him want to burn Mr. Trott with plastic bags.

In his closing address, Mr. Pettingill said there was no motive for Anderson to torture Mr. Trott, making it a “bizarre case”.

He questioned Mr. Trott's ability to identify Anderson while he was on heroin and had received “a serious beating with licks around the head”.

But Crown prosecutor Anthony Blackman's said Mr. Trott never tried “to present himself as Saint Peter”.

“He had no reason to lie,” Mr. Blackman said. “He was not mistaken about his injuries that the doctor confirmed. Why would he be mistaken about who was responsible?”

Mr. Blackman said there was “no room for vigilante justice” in Bermuda.

“Human torture is a very serious incident,” he said. “(Trott) admitted he had problems with the law.

“Does that mean he is not capable of being believed? Does that mean that he should be beaten until the stuffing literally comes out of him? A bad boy is better than no boy at all.”

A verdict is expected today, after Mr. Justice Greaves gives his summing up of the case to the six-woman, six-man jury.