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| Europe |
| EU funds diverted, piracy trial told |
| 2010-07-22 |
| [The Nation (Nairobi)] Funds for the legal representation of suspected Somali pirates have been diverted to other uses, a court was told on Wednesday. "They had a big sale on Heineken, so we bought enough to last for awhile." Lawyer Francis Kadima, representing seven suspected Somali pirates, said a European Union official told him the funds were no longer available. [Bu-u-u-u-u-urp!] "My conscience cannot allow me to continue with the matter. It will be a sad day for justice for the accused to be placed in a begging situation where they have been denied facilities to put up a credible defence because funds have been misdirected," said Mr Kadima. "Sad, ain't it? Like another cold one?" He told senior resident magistrate Mr Tito Gesora that his clients had been unable to organise their defence in clear breach of a multilateral memorandum of understanding between the government and the EU. He said he had correspondence from a UN official indicating that the organisation had provided Sh240 million for the suspected pirates' defence. He said that according to the memorandum of understanding, piracy suspects were entitled to legal representation and that the EU would take care of their fees. Mr Kadima told the court that the suspects were, however, not told of their right to legal representation when taking their pleas. "It is after I got access to the MOU that I realised what was going on. At the time, I had four piracy cases with more than 30 clients," said Mr Kadima. He said another four previous cases were taken away from him and given to a Nairobi-based lawyer. The seven suspected pirates are Mohamud Kheyre, Abshir Salat, Abdullahi Ahmed, Abdirahman Hussein, Abdikarim Abdullahi, Hassan Isse and Feysal Ali. They are alleged to have attacked the MV Polaris on February 11 last year in the Indian Ocean. They were allegedly armed with five AK 47 rifles, a pistol, and an RPG-7 portable rocket launcher. The case continues. |
| Posted by:Fred |