National Basketball Team Attorney returns from FIBA Tribunal

The National Basketball team may have won silver at the COCABA games in Cancun but the other battle to keep the medals occurred last week at the International Basketball Federation’s headquarters in Switzerland. Attorney Godfrey Smith, who is just back in Belize, argued that seven disputed members of the national basketball team were eligible to play even though they weren’t born in the Jewel. So Belize laws versus FIBA rules; which one has higher authority? Smith says he believes our chances of winning the appeal are good.

Godfrey Smith, Attorney for National Basketball Team
“You obviously have to know what our laws says about how and when you obtain nationality. Now they pointed out and said look, but even your immigration authorities in some of the letters when we were arguing this thing in the initial stages mentioned that the players acquired nationalities on certain dates. And when you look at those dates, those dates would have to be obtained at the age of sixteen. And we have to say yes, those letters did loosely use the term that those players like Milton Palacio required nationality in certain time. But we pointed out, at that time; nobody envisioned that this was going to turn into a strictly legal technical argument. Once the matter was examined carefully, all the authorities and the lawyers looked at the matter, it was then clarified that there are no nationality certificates in relation to these players. They are what are called certificates of affirmation of Belizean nationality and we were able to take them out and show the judge; see here, nothing has said nationality certificate. It says certificate of affirmation. Affirming means that you are confirming, you’re declaring your nationality and each of them says effective on the date of birth of the person.”

Jose Sanchez
“Let me ask you, how does our chances look?”

Godfrey Smith
“Well, based on their legal arguments, I’ll have to say good. And even so, based on me, the question is just too small in my mind because they did not even argue for a different interpretation based on Swiss law. All we can go on, if you ask me how does the case look, how I can say based on how our approach to interpreting constitutions and laws and so far as that goes, we believe we have a very strong case.”