Sup. Ct. hears Therese Cabral passport case
The Supreme Court case of Therese Cabral continued today in courtroom number three in Belize City. The forty-nine-year-old store clerk is charged with fifteen counts of forgery and six counts of perjury in connection with the illegal sale of passports. The first witness called to the stand by prosecutor Majorie Moyston was Inspector Santiago Ciau. Admitted to evidence today was a statement the accused made to Ciau during the investigation period in 2002. Ciau, then a sergeant with the Crimes Investigation Branch, testified that Cabral had been questioned twice regarding some thirty-seven Belize Nationality Applications; the first time on the twenty-eighth of August and again on the second of September. The officer maintains that on September second, Cabral made an official eight page statement to the police verifying that it was in fact her signature on all thirty seven BNA forms. Cabral’s signature appears under the referee section of each of the forms, indicating that the signatory had known the applicant for at least five years. In his cross examination, defense attorney Edwin Flowers questioned Ciau over the circumstances of the interview, revealing that Cabral had not in her own hand, written the statement and that Ciau had inserted additional information such as the numbers on each form into the statement. However, on redirect from Moyston, Ciau confirmed that Cabral had in fact verified the information in the statement to him.
The second witness took the stand this afternoon. Sergeant Claudio Mai, a member of the Eastern Division patrol branch in March 2003, was ordered by his commanders to make physical checks of the addresses listed on the nationality forms. Mai listed the number of addresses he had visited on New Road, Freetown Road, Marina Towers, Barrack Road and King Street. For each of these, it was revealed, the person in question either could not be found living there or the address itself did not exist.
Cabral, who was arrested on July thirty-first 2003, is out on bail pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. If convicted she faces ten years imprisonment. When Cabral was arrested, the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions made a point of underscoring the fact that she is an employee of Odette’s Fancy Store on Albert Street, owned by Jose Shoman and family. Shoman was a high profile immigration consultant under the now defunct Economic Citizenship Programme.
In addition to Cabral, two Belize City businessmen, fifty-seven-year-old Jabor “Gabby” Affif and fifty-two-year-old Hassan El-Sayed, have also been arrested and charged in connection with the passport investigation. The cases against Affif and El-Sayed will be heard jointly in the Supreme Court. They include some one hundred and nineteen accusations of forging official documents.
One disturbing note in today’s trial had less to do with legal matters than with the behavior of several officers of the court, who appear to have little respect for people of Asian ethnicity. A large number of the names on the nationality applications were of Chinese origin, people that the participants repeatedly referred to as “Chiney”. That derogatory slang is bad enough in the corner shop, but when heard in the Supreme Court makes one wonder about the quality of today’s higher education.
