Category: Justice

Uruguay is open to taking in detainees from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, President Jose Mujica said on Thursday, calling the decision “a question of human rights”.

“If the inmates of Guantanamo want to make their homes in Uruguay, they can do it,” Mujica told Channel 10’s “Subrayado” programme, adding that he “would not be their jailer”.

Uruguay’s weekly Busqueda magazine reported earlier in the day that Mujica had agreed to accept five of the prisoners at President Barack Obama’s request, and that US Secretary of State John Kerry personally called Mujica to thank him on Monday.

The magazine said the deal includes a requirement that the former detainees remain inside Uruguay’s borders for at least two years.

However, US Ambassador to Uruguay Julissa Reynoso denied that an agreement had been met, saying that talks were ongoing. She specifically denied that the governments had agreed that five prisoners would go to Uruguay.

“That’s not correct. We’re consulting and in conversation, but there is no deal to make a process like this in Uruguay,” she told Montevideo’s “El Espectador” radio show.

Guantanamo promise

US President Barack Obama is struggling to fulfil his five-year-old promise to close the controversial jail, and countries have been slow to come forward and agree to accept transferred inmates.

Uruguay would be the first country in South America to do so.

It was “a question of human rights,” Mujica later told reporters while at a farm fair in rural Uruguay.

The prisoners “haven’t seen a judge, haven’t seen a prosecutor, and the president of the United States wants to resolve this problem as well,” added Mujica, a former leftist rebel who spent more than a decade in prison.

“They asked a lot of countries if they could give shelter, and I said yes.”

Mujica said the inmates would be granted refugee status, and could eventually bring their families to Uruguay.

When asked if he had demanded something in return from Washington, Mujica replied: “I don’t do favours for free.”

Significant progress

The US has resettled 43 Guantanamo detainees in 17 countries since Obama took office, and released 38 others to their homelands. Last week, the State Department office working to close the prison said to expect significant progress with the remaining 154.

A statement from the US Embassy in Montevideo on Thursday said “we are consulting with various countries in the region about closing the detention centre. Given the leadership role that President Jose Mujica shows in the region, we have consulted with his government.”

Obama came into office pledging to close the prison for terrorism suspects on the US base in Cuba but was thwarted by Congress, which imposed restrictions on transferring the prisoners overseas and a ban on moving any of the men held there to the United States.

Congress finally eased the restrictions in December, and transfers and releases, which had come to a virtual halt, have resumed as part of the president’s renewed efforts.

france24

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde arrived Wednesday at a Paris court to face more questions over her role in a 2008 arbitration that awarded a massive state payout to controversial businessman Bernard Tapie.

It is Lagarde’s third visit to the Court of Justice of the Republic, which is empowered to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by ministers in the exercise of their official duties.

The former finance minister was last questioned in May, when she avoided being charged and was instead given the less compromising statues of “assisted witness” in what has become known in France as the “Tapie Affair”.

The case revolves around a controversial €400 million state payout ordered by an arbitration panel in 2008 for Bernard Tapie, a former politician and businessman, over his sale of sportswear company Adidas.

The arbitration panel upheld Tapie’s claim that the Crédit Lyonnais bank had defrauded him by intentionally undervaluing Adidas at the time of the sale and that the state – as the bank’s principal shareholder – should compensate him.

It was Lagarde who, in her role as French finance minister at the time, ordered the case to be heard by an arbitration panel instead of proceeding through the regular courts.

Critics argue that the state should not have paid compensation to a convicted criminal who was bankrupt at the time and would not have been able to pursue the case in court. Tapie spent six months in prison in 1997 for match-fixing during his time as president of France’s biggest football club, Olympique Marseille.

They say that Lagarde ensured Tapie received preferential treatment by referring the matter to arbitration due to his financial support for former French president Nicolas Sarkozy – Lagarde’s boss at the time – in his 2007 presidential bid.

Lagarde has always denied any wrongdoing.

Tapie was placed under formal investigation for committing fraud as part of an organised gang in late June of last year.

Orange telecoms CEO Stéphane Richard, who was Lagarde’s chief-of-staff at the time of the payout, was also placed under formal investigation for fraud in the matter last June.

france24

Popular Jamaican dancehall and reggae star Vybz Kartel has been found guilty of murder in a high-profile trial.

He and three co-defendants were convicted under tight security of killing an associate, Clive Lizard Williams, in a row over a missing gun.

Parts of the capital Kingston were cordoned off in advance of the verdict and police patrols were stepped up.

Kartel, whose real name is Adidja Palmer, is one of the biggest names in Jamaican dancehall reggae.

The reporters in Kingston say that Kartel’s bleached skin – covered by tattoos – made him stand out from the crowd – and the “World Boss” as he called himself also often glorified violence in his music.

The 65-day trial was the longest running criminal hearing in the history of Jamaica’s circuit court system, local media reported.

Police cordoned off streets around the Supreme Court before Thursday’s session started, seeking to prevent any disruption by fans supporting the entertainer.

Illegal guns

Shortly before the jury started to deliberate in the afternoon, about 200 people briefly broke through barricades at one intersection shouting “Free Kartel!”

he sentencing date is scheduled for 27 March and Kartel’s lawyers have indicated they will appeal against the verdict.

When Kartel was arrested in 2011, it was alleged he had been involved in two killings, but one of those cases was thrown out last year after key evidence went missing.

Prosecutors said that Williams was beaten to death at Kartel’s home in August 2011 after being lured there to account for two missing illegal guns.

A body has never been found but police testified that they had unearthed a text message from Kartel’s phone saying Williams had been chopped up to “mincemeat” so fine that his remains would never be found.

Defence lawyer Tom Tavares-Finson told jurors the prosecution’s case against Kartel was “dishonest” and “incompetent”, noting that witness statements and a compact disc with evidence saved on it had gone missing.

The AP news agency says that in a bizarre twist to the case, a male juror was arrested on Thursday evening on charges of attempting to bribe the jury foreman to free Kartel, who was convicted by a 10-1 majority verdict.

BBC