Grenada's top prosecutor says manslaughter charges have been quashed against five police officers accused of beating a Canadian visitor to death there more than a year ago.
   
Christopher Nelson, the Caribbean country's director of prosecutions, says a judge ruled Friday that a coroner's inquest must be held before the criminal case can proceed.
   
But he says the charges can be brought back if evidence presented at the inquest suggests they are warranted.
   
The officers are accused of beating Oscar Bartholomew, 39, into a fatal coma on Boxing Day 2011 while he was in a cell in the hamlet of St. David's.
   
Relatives said the altercation occurred after he bear-hugged a plainclothes policewoman he had mistaken for a friend and she yelled, ``Rape!''
   
Bartholomew lived in Toronto but was in his native Grenada to visit family with his wife of ten years, Dolette Cyr, of Cascapedia-St. Jules, Que.