ST LUCIA police kept hit lists and planted guns at crime scenes to legitimise police shootings, a Jamaican police investigation has concluded.

St Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said that the “extremely damning” probe had found that police had shot dead 12 people and reported the murders as by unknown assailants.

Members of the police high command may have been involved in cover-ups of the extrajudicial shootings in 2010 and 2011, the investigators claimed.

In a national address on Sunday, Mr Anthony said: “The report confirms that the blacklist or death lists referenced by the media, human rights organisations, victims’ families and citizens alike did exist.”

The Jamaica Constabulary’s independent probe found that evidence had been interfered with at scenes of police shootings, while a server used by police commanders had been “deliberately tampered with.”

The dozen killings occurred during a security initiative called Operation Restore Confidence, launched as the island grappled with a rise in violent crime.

Five of the men shot by police were killed in a single operation in the town of Vieux Fort.

Mr Anthony said the investigators made 31 recommendations in their report, the main one being that prosecutions of “all police officers involved in the unlawful killings of citizens” be considered.

The Prime Minister said the public prosecutor must now determine whether to pursue criminal cases against the police.