The predicament that government now finds itself in, according to Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay, is entirely the responsibility of PM Barrow, who privately negotiated the settlement of compensation package with Lord Michael Ashcroft in Miami in 2015. As for the monies that were set aside for charitable work in the name of Belizeans, only a […]
So, roughly eighty million U.S. dollars in ten days. It’s perhaps the biggest disbursement that government would have made in respect of the B.T.L. saga within such a limited span. To make matters worse, that hundred and sixty million Belize dollar payout is likely to impact the country’s financial reserves, as it represents approximately twenty […]
Prime Minister Barrow, following this morning’s decision, called a press conference this afternoon to address the judgment. While government will meet its obligations to Dunkeld and B.T.L. Employees Trust in their entireties, PM Barrow is not too happy with the outcome. He says that the CCJ verdict leaves a lot to be desired. The quantum […]
A Belize City youth has been arraigned for the attempted murder of well-known taxi-man, James Swazo, who was shot on October twenty-ninth, 2017 at his home in the Jane Usher Boulevard area. After three days of an intensive search, police arrested and charged twenty-year-old Joshua Gillett of Belize City. When he appeared in court, Gillett […]
Minister of Immigration and Nationality, Senator Godwin Hulse, made his first appearance before his Senate colleagues on the Special Select Committee this morning in Belmopan. He was questioned on various aspects of the work of the Department, which he has said he closely supervised with the assistant of junior Ministers like Elvin Penner and Beverly […]
Opposition Senator Eamon Courtenay revealed during this morning’s testimony that, among the rush of secret informants to the Special Select Committee, an unnamed source visited him some time ago with an interesting tale about his personal involvement in the rush to grant nationality to unqualified persons at the prodding of Ministers of Government. According to […]
The law on granting visas for entry into Belize places discretion solely on the shoulder of the Director of Immigration, assisted by her juniors in the department, to accept or deny such documents. But it has been well-established that certain ministers of government had expectations that their written recommendations and, in some cases, phone calls […]
Back to the senate hearings…Former minister Elvin Penner was appointed back in 2012 to join Godwin Hulse in the immigration ministry and was assigned direct responsibility for the Immigration Department. Hulse testified today that with the heavy workload of portfolios assigned to him at that time by the Prime Minister, he left Penner to do […]
The infamous Won Hong Kim affair, while not the start of the Immigration Department’s troubles, certainly exacerbated them. After its discovery multiple investigations were triggered, including the one that led Minister Godwin Hulse to today’s Senate meeting. While there was limited discussion of the circumstances surrounding how Kim obtained a passport and Belizean nationality without […]
Youth activist Justin Usher was today arraigned in the Belize City Magistrate Court for assaulting a female police officer. The twenty-six-year-old U.B. student from Los Lagos, Belize District was detained over the weekend after an incident inside a nightclub in which Police Constable Christal Noralez claims that he struck her on the chin. In the […]
Usher is to return to court on January fifth, 2018 when disclosure should be made on the matter. But he believes that he is being politically targeted, even though Usher says he is not an aspiring politician. He believes that it is a plot to discredit him. Justin Usher, Charged for Assaulting an Officer […]
In November 2007, a husband killed his wife with a single shotgun blast to the head. After being tried and convicted for her murder and sentenced to life, forty-six-year-old Glenford Gilbert Bermudez, aka “Bucket,” today opted out of another lifetime sentence and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter of Racquel Violet Bermudez. […]
The Government of Belize has been given one last chance by the Caribbean Court of Justice to live up to its promises made in April of 2015, when it agreed and consented that the Maya of the Toledo District have a right to communal land title among the villages in which they are the majority. […]
A trial date of December eleventh has been set in the fixed date claim filed by Leader of the Opposition John Briceño against the Attorney General, which concerns the appointment of Franz Parke as a Justice of the Court of Appeal. The appointment took place on October sixteenth, but objection had been raised by Briceño […]
Aside from the Roaring Creek police officer who is in trouble for his drunken behaviour, in Belize City a cop was detained and is in custody for an incident that happened outside of the Elements Night Club on Saturday night. This morning, Police Constable Carlisle Bol was taken to court and arraigned for the possession […]
A thirty-one-year-old mother and her two children ages were viciously attacked inside their home on Mayflower Street in Belize City. The culprit has been identified as the common-law husband to Nikita Smith and the step-father to her two minor children. He is forty-seven-year-old Mark Rhaburn Senior, a construction worker of Hattieville, who was arraigned this […]
Belmopan police have arrested and charged three persons in connection with last Thursday’s robbery of First Stop Pawn Shop in Belmopan. And it appears that a disgruntled former employee of the establishment orchestrated the heist. With assistance from the Belize City Police, three city residents have been fingered as the thieves. They are: twenty-year-old Ryan […]
Brothers Alexander Underwood, twenty-eight, and Austin, twenty-four, have made bail on a single charge of possession of prohibited ammunition, to wit, a single five-point-five-six round allegedly found on their property in Belize City on Monday. The elder Underwood is well-known as alleged leader of the Southside Gangsters but had been making recent attempts to reform […]
Following Underwood’s release from custody this evening, News Five spoke with one of his relatives. She says that there is indeed surveillance footage which purportedly captured a team of officers entering Underwood’s property on Caesar Ridge Road in the early hours of Wednesday morning. She also says that the brothers are the victims of constant […]
Judge Herbert Lord today handed down a decision in the bail application of twenty-six-year-old Warren Lewis, accused of the August eighteenth 2009 murder of Albert Braddick Allen. Lewis’ attorney, Darrell Bradley sought bail for Allen on a number of constitutional grounds, but in a twenty-eight page ruling, Judge Lord denied bail and concluded that there […]
The battle over custody of the three surviving Cannon siblings continues in the Family Court. They are the younger siblings of the late Faye Lin Cannon, found dead with severe trauma at a San Pedro resort in July. Initially questioned about the death of the child, the siblings’ adoptive parents, David and Anke Doehm, were […]
Twenty-one-year-old Bernard Cayetano, aka Unlimited, a local artist was arraigned on Wednesday in the Belize City Magistrate’s Court for allegedly obstructing and assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest. He was released on bail but today another artist, Shikell Nunez, aka “Cross Di Nitro” was also taken to court and arraigned, but he did not […]
Up and coming local artist Unlimited was slapped with three charges today when he appeared in court. Unlimited, whose real name is Bernard Cayetano, was charged with obstruction, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. The charges stem from an incident on Wednesday that happened at the house of Kenneth ‘Big Tom’ Flowers – Unlimited’s […]
A former B.D.F. volunteer who shot and killed another volunteer acted in self-defence, according to Judge Adolph Lucas in a ruling handed down this morning in the murder trial of twenty-four-year-old Jermaine Rhaburn. Rhaburn was accused of the shooting death of his colleague with an m-sixteen rifle during an incident at the Melisha Hall compound […]
April twenty-second, 2015, was a historic day for the Maya peoples of the South. In the Supreme Court of Belize, the Caribbean Court of Justice presided over a consent order agreed between the Government of Belize and the Maya Leaders Alliance and Toledo Alcaldes Association, respectively. Among other things, the government agreed to develop a […]
