AFP - Seven men convicted of the murder of Grenadan prime minister Maurice Bishop during a 1983 coup were set free Saturday, 26 years after the killing that spurred a US military invasion.
  
Former deputy prime minister Bernard Coard was released, along with former ministers and senior officers from the People's Revolutionary Army, after Governor General Carlyle Glean reviewed their sentences.
  
Scores of relatives, former revolutionary colleagues and supporters gathered at the prison gates and cheered as the men walked free.
  
"I will continue to make my contribution to Grenada as long as it is entirely in a non-political, non-partisan way, for obvious reasons," Coard said minutes after being released.
  
He said he planned to move to Jamaica to join his ailing wife Phyllis, who was released from prison in 2000 for health reasons.
  
The couple were part of the so-called "Grenada 17" convicted of murdering left-wing prime minister Bishop and several members of his cabinet in the 1983 coup. They received death sentences that were later commuted to life imprisonment.
  
The release of the last coup participants closes a chapter in the story of a four-and-a-half year revolution in Grenada, which collapsed at its height in a power struggle between Bishop and Coard.
  
Bishop and several of his cabinet colleagues were lined up against a wall at Fort Rupert, now called Fort George, and executed by members of their own People's Revolutionary Army in October l983.
  
One week after the coup, US troops invaded Grenada, with US president Ronald Reagan saying he was concerned about the government's close ties to communist Cuba and that the breakdown of civil order threatened the lives of US students on the island.
  
At the time, Cuba had close ties with Grenada, and this small island 100 miles (161 kilometers) from Venezuela was considered a possible base that could be used for the Soviet Union to transport resources for Central American guerrillas.
  
A government statement said the sentence review was the result of a court decision.
  
"Their release is based not on subjective factors but objective factors -- their conduct, their attitude, their industry in prison, their work, their contribution to development in prison and other prisoners," said Ruggles Ferguson, an attorney for the ex-prisoners.