A commitment to the rule of law The Dominican Republic still had no options to detain a Canadian airline crew and passengers for seven months after reporting contraband hidden on its plane, government officials said.
As the Canadian trial comes to an end, diplomats and prosecutors from across the country are providing their defense of how the ordinary case was handled.
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It would have been a mistake to release the five members of the Pivot Airline team, whose appeal to the government triggered the ordinary case, and seven passengers until the matter is very well investigated, they said.
Michelle Cohen, the Dominican ambassador to Ottawa, even denied that the 12 Canadians had spent any time in jail, despite detailed accounts of the harrowing nine-day party some of them provided, and the fact that a bail hearing was held to see if they would be released. In fact, prosecutors had asked to keep them in prison for a year.
A sentence handed down ordered the organization’s release on bail in April — a week and a half after their arrest and imprisonment — on the condition that they each pay $23,000, their passports and not leave the country.
The prosecutors, who are part of the Crown Prosecutor’s Office, filed an action in court Friday that would permanently end the case against the Canadians and allow them, regardless, to return home.
The ministry “was acting responsibly, as the investigation had not received sufficient evidence to support the allegation,” he said in Spanish. The request still needs to be approved by a judge, which could happen on Tuesday.
On April 5, the Pivot team, which brought an organization of potential investors to an Alberta company and its visitors in Toronto, discovered a bag in a mechanical compartment of the CRJ-100 and reported it to authorities. Dominican police discovered seven more bags, containing a total of 210 kilograms of cocaine, and arrested the Canadians as suspects.
The decision to end his “coercive measures” came after repeated attempts by defense lawyers to present evidence in court that Pivot said it had permanently acquitted the Canadians: airport security obtained footage of an unrelated user allegedly placing bags of cocaine on the plane that day. before leaving. Pivot says his lawyers received the video in August and it has been police property since April.
But prosecutors’ statements and Cohen’s comments suggest the Canadians could have been released earlier.
“This case has been within the framework of the rule of law,” the ambassador said in an interview. The instances are not won in the media, they are won in the courts.
If the government had limited itself to dismissing the prima facie case, “we would be facing a situation of absolute impunity that would generate serious suspicions in society about the movements of the Public Ministry,” the ministry said.
However, evidence of a full investigation through Dominican authorities is unclear. The crew and passengers say no one has questioned them or pressed charges.
While the defense, armed with new evidence, has tried for the past three months to ask for a ruling to dismiss the case, four consecutive hearings were canceled because the court-appointed translator failed to show up, according to a recent report by the Canadian Branch of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). Subsequently, a fifth court appearance was cancelled after the prosecutor herself failed to appear.
“Unfortunately, the Dominican government continues to forget what has been presented to it,” said the one of North America’s largest pilots’ union.
Meanwhile, at least one government and several foreign monitoring and human rights groups, from Transparency International to the International Commission of Jurists, have painted an unflattering picture of the Dominican legal system.
The World Justice Project ranked it 96th out of 139 countries for lack of corruption last year. A 2020 State Department report from EE. UU. de highlighted endemic corruption among judges, such as “harsh and potentially deadly detention conditions; arbitrary detention”.
Prosecutors also alleged that while the plane was in the custody of the Attorney General’s Office, there was an attempt to take it out of the country with a “false flight plan,” calling it a scam.
No additional main points were provided. Pivot CEO Eric Edmondson said Monday he would respond to the allegation once his team was off the island.
Capt. Rob DiVenanzo and flight attendant Alex Rozov told the National Post about their nine-day suspension after their first arrest. The Canadian men were placed in a small mobile with suspected drug dealers, who they said were constantly threatened and tried to extort money.
They and others described the ordeal in the same way as other media outlets, and added CTV’s W5.
“We are completely horrified,” the ruling said at the bail hearing, quoting passenger Ranya Al-Dayeh. “We were here during the holidays; We have no idea what’s going on. “
Prosecutors then asked that the Canadians remain in prison for 12 months: the men of CCR14-Anamuya and the women of the Higuey Women’s Public Prison, the sentence wrote.
But Cohen insisted they spent no time behind bars, saying the Canadians were only being held under an “economic guarantee,” an obvious reference to the bail they eventually obtained.
“They were not in jail,” said the ambassador, who said foreign media had misrepresented the case. “There is no police custody. “
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