Seven men convicted of killing Grenada’s leader in the 1983 coup that triggered a US invasion strode out of prison yesterday-the last of 17 who had been sentenced for the crime.

Dozens of relatives cheered and clapped as former deputy prime minister Bernard Coard and six other men emerged from the crumbling 17th-century prison where they served nearly 26 years. Former co-defendants took their hands and accompanied them.

Leftist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, four Cabinet ministers and six supporters were dragged before a firing squad and shot dead on October 19, 1983, by members of their own New Jewel movement-followers of Coard who demanded more radical policies.

Six days later, thousands of US troops invaded the island on orders of President Ronald Reagan, who said he sought to protect American medical students and to sever Grenada’s growing ties with communist Cuba.

US troops arrested the 17 defendants, and 14 were initially sentenced to death.

Their sentences were commuted to life in prison in 1991, and the London-based Privy Council, the highest court of appeal for the island, threw out those sentences in February 2007.

At their resentencing, a judge said the prisoners showed remorse and sentenced them to just two more years in prison.

The release is a milestone in the island’s effort to heal wounds from the revolution, said Senator Chester Humphrey.

’It’s the end of one chapter, not the completion of the book, as Grenada tries to build a future by not living in the past,’ he said.

Humphrey said he expects the men to reintegrate themselves back into society.

Leon Cornwall, for example, became an ordained minister in prison and will work with the Methodist church upon his release, Rev Tessica Hacksaw told The Associated Press.

Cornwall said the 1983 coup ’was regrettable, and something that should never happen again.’

Hudson Austin, one of the men who was released last year, also criticised the killings, saying, ’We did not solve the differences as big men.’

The bodies of Bishop and ten men killed with him have never been found.