The applicants were convicted by the General Court Martial
of the offences of stealing and obtaining goods by false pretences. They were
each sentenced to serve a five-year prison term. Aggrieved by that decision and
sentence they wanted to appeal but were late to file the appeal. They lodged an
application for enlargement of time to enable them file their appeal. That
application was met by a preliminary objection that it took 18 months and 21
days for the applicants to lodge chamber application seeking an extension of
time after being granted liberty to do so; that was an unduly too long a period
to lodge the application.