Prosecutor to testify in
human smuggling case
PHILIPSBURG--Prosecutor Dikran Sarian will be heard as a witness in an appeal case concerning human smuggling, the Joint Court of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba decided on Thursday.
Sarian and several other witnesses will be heard by a judge of instruction before January 31, the court ruled.
Sarian will have to testify because attorneys Eldon Sulvaran and Jairo Bloem claimed he had violated the principles of a fair trial in the cases of their clients. They said Sarian had interfered in their clients’ free choice of a lawyer.
The lawyers accused Sarian of having pressured their clients and their families to choose another lawyer. They want the Joint Court to declare the Prosecutor’s Office’s cases against their clients inadmissible because the principles of a fair trial were violated.
“I can only guess why the Prosecutor did this. Maybe he wanted another adversary in court,” Sulvaran said, while comparing legal practice in St. Maarten with that in the former Communist states in Eastern Europe.
Sarian had said he had not been in violation of the law in advising the suspects to take on another lawyer.
The case itself concerns the smuggling of an undisclosed number of undocumented Chinese citizens into St. Maarten between January and October 2006.
The operation, led from the People’s Republic of China, was designed to take Chinese immigrants to the U.S. mainland via St. Maarten, St. Eustatius and U.S. territories in the Caribbean.
The St. Maarten branch allegedly was led by A.C.H., and further consisted of a number of workers at Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) who were to guide the Chinese immigrants to certain Immigration officers who were supposed to “look the other way.”
The judge of the Court of First Instance threw out the case against A.C.H. because he found that the prosecutor had violated the rules of a fair trial. Not only had he tried to influence the suspect’s choice of a lawyer, he also had kept documents out of the lawyer’s hands and had not submitted legal documents in connection with the suspect’s detention on time, the judge ruled.
The Court of First Instance sentenced Immigration officer Sonaida Richardson (24) on April 24 to nine months in prison, 225 days of which were suspended, and 80 hours of community service.
Pending the hearing of witnesses in these cases, the Joint Court decided to suspend the hearing of the cases of Richardson, A.C.H., and airport worker O.A.D., until January 31, 2008.
