Malika Karoum possibly extradited? Doubt it!

According to dutch weekly Nieuwe Revu, Malika Karoum might be extradited by Dubai. Again the by now completely milked out allegations of money-laundering and  organized crime iare mentioned though currently it seem that these allegations solely come from the phantasy of self-proclaimed kid-hunter Jacques Smits and Mohammed Boulnouar, Malika's ex-husband .

Until now, there is no proof that the sole interest of the justice department in Malika is ianything else than in connection with a child custody case between her and her estranged husband.

This ex-husband supposedly was threathened again by an unknown assailant with a gun and silencer. Boulnouar -again supposedly- just barely managed to escape into snackbar Samar on the Amsterdam Bos-en Lommerweg. Indeed, at this snackbar he was seen coming in screamingly but no one say the assaillant. The police is looking for witnesses. Most likely there was no shooting and if I may add, most likely there was no assaillant.

Malika's ex has filed criminal complaints against Malika several times before. These included intimidation, arsony and battery, though his attackers only once -supposedly- indicated 'they had a message from Malika'.

In May the court awarded custody to Boulnouar, but Malika is firecely resisting. Her lawyer has requested revision of the May 2008 verdict. That case will serve December 1.

Boulnouar's lawyer, Emma Swart, wants to raise hell at the DA's office to ensure that Malika attends in person, she tells Nieuwe Revu. "It cannot be that the child that is formally awarded to her father, remains in Dubai".

That of course is a nonsense statement of Ms Swart. Malika can choose to appear in person and that has nothing to do with the whereabouts of her child and on top of that Malika has the right to be represented -at proxy- by legal council.

The arrest of Ryan Pieters- Rounding up the usual suspects

The arrest of Ryan Pieters, a suspect in the recent abduction of Bonaire based dutch pharmacy assistent Marlies van der Kouwe who was abducted on Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles saturday night 20 Sept is based on one fact and one fact alone: his rapsheet

Ryan Pieters has a prior arrest and conviction for rape and abduction of a Chech tourist in 2002 and he was recently released from Curaçao's Bon Futura prison and had returned to Bonaire. In reality that is not the only reason why he emerged on the radarscreen of Bonaire's finest. Another compelling reason was simply that they could not think of anybody else.

So imagine the state at Bonaires Police headquarters where police chief Jan Schagen only heard in the course of Monday 22nd of September that a girl had been abducted the fridaynight before and his constables only action was to pick up her lost slipper and shrug their shoulders.

When they could not find any leads and in a desperate move to avoid the Natalee Holloway disaster that plagued Bonaire's sister island a few years before they turned to the only thing the police is good at: Rounding up the usual suspects. Since Bonaire is aonly a small island, they only had one, which ofcourse makes it easier for the police. They do not have to decide by tossing a coin 'who dunnit' as they only have one suspect.

So after it was decided who must be the culprit, now Bonaire's finest is doing everything they can to prove that Ryan Pieters did it and refuse to be distracted by the facts.
Helped by the media tidbits of info are released that have a single goal: to convince everybody that Ryan did it. This strategy is not unknown in the Netherlands as is proven by many judicial errors in which people were convicted to long jailsentences while a child could see there was no evidence.
Obviuously this strategy is now also being adopted by Bonaire, by Dutch police chief Schagen.

So what is the incriminating evidence:

• A scooter 'similar to the one used in the abduction' was found mud covered and 'hidden' in a shed at Ryan's uncle's house. The mud was of a type that was identical to the mud at the scene of the crime. That is pure bogus. All scooters look basically alike and it is a popular mode of transport in Bonaire. Marlies was abducted on a public thruway, where Ryan or anybody else could have passed on that scooter any given day. Besides on small island like aruba chances are all the mud is basically the same.The scooter was not 'hidden', it was just parked in a shed. Nevertheless finding the scooter was reason for the arrest of Pieters. They might as well have arrested anybody occupying a house where a scooter was parked.
• Then last week suddenly a 'breakthrough' was claimed. There was a 'partial confession' whatever that may mean. Apparently according to the newspapers and many blogs on the subject. Ryan had admitted to have had contact with Marlies the night before and supposedly insinuated that 'something had happened' between the two. For one thing: Kralendijk, the main town on Bonaire is so small it would fit in Yankee stadium with room to spare and everybody runs into eachother when they go out in the towns only watering hole. More importantly however is the fact that yesterday it became clear that Pieters has not said this at all. He only has tolld investigators that he had seen Marlies around and about on the town. Well, as said, it is a small town.

Because the police already made up their mind who the culprit is, any evidence possibly leading to another conclusion or even another perpetrator must be strictly ignored. So ignored is the fact that it might be case of mistaken identity. Last week Wouter van Kouwen (a supposed criminal who turned state evidence) the father of Jaymelee van Kouwen - note the similarity in names with Marlies- a girl who is roughly the same age and has the same looks as Marlies and who works in a shop next to the bar where Marlies partied before her abduction, reported that he received a phonecall demanding a ransome for the release of his daugther Jayme. Even more: Van Kouwen's other daugther -8 year old Bo- fell victim to a failed abduction in Bonaire, on Wednesday 24 sept, only a few days after the abduction of Marlies.

The police however declare the two abductions to be unrelated and just 'coincidental'. Also, they have stated that the ransome phonecall 'did not happen'. Unfortunately they stated this without even investigating and did not even contact Wouter van Kouwen to ask about it. Until today he still is waiting for the police to ask him about it.

Another unfortunate mishap for the police that they are ignoring in order not to be confused by the facts is that Ryan has an alibi for that evening and a large part of the night: his girlfriend. Even though she cannot testify to his whereabouts 'every minute' of that evening and night, it hardly seems likely that Ryan left his girlfriend to go abduct and rape someone and had time enough to dispose of the body in a way that the police has been unable to find her: Bonaire is only 288 sq km.

None of us knows if Ryan indeed abducted and possibly raped and killed Marlies, but it seems that his arrest and the subsequent investigation is done out of a desire to produce results. Who cares if he did it, as long as he can be convicted. Anything to avoid receiving Natalee Holloway like criticism and see tourist numbers to the island dwindle.

British Diver held in Honduras after Dutch student dies

British diving instructor Daniel Ross (30), is being held in Honduras after one of his students, Dutch tourist Mariska Mast (23),  collapsed in his bathroom and later died.

Dan Ross spent several days in a notoriously grim jail in Coxen Hole on the Honduran island of Roatan before being transferred to a police station following the intervention of British diplomats.

Mr Ross, who holds dual British and Australian nationality, has yet to be charged with any crime but, as a foreigner, the Hondurans consider him a flight risk.

He told police that Mariska Mast collapsed suddenly on his bathroom floor at around 3am last Friday after they had gone out drinking.
After monitoring her condition for two hours with a Korean woman with whom he shared the flat, Mr Ross noticed her breathing had stopped and immediately performed cardiopulmonary resusciation (CPR).

According to British officials, Mr Ross took her to hospital but, unable to converse with Spanish-speaking doctors who signaled that he had to leave, he returned to his home in the island's West End district.

Finding his housekeeper cleaning up after the incident, he helped her - unaware that Miss Mast had died and that they were removing vital evidence.
Mat Harper, the British Honorary Consul on Roatan, said he was visiting Mr Ross every day with food and reading materials.

He said: “He's in pretty good shape. He's being detained as a matter of course as, under Honduran law, he was associated with the woman who died.”
He added: “He's being held for questioning because the Hondurans want to ascertain exactly what happened that night.”
An autopsy at the weekend was inconclusive but Mr Ross's fate will become clear at a second hearing when the Hondurans must decide whether to charge or release him.

Mr Ross, who was born in Australia but is understood to have a British mother, had been on Roatan since March. He taught at the British-owned Coconut Tree Divers diving school, where he had completed both his diving and instructor training .
Staff at the school said they were "horrified" by his situation and described Mr Ross as a “great guy”.

A fellow teacher said: “It's really harsh. In the diving industry, we're taught to administer CPR and first aid. Dan went into the mode that all of us go into when that happens.”

The intestines murder

A man who killed his girlfriend by pulling out her intestines through anus and vagina has his sentenced reduced from 13 to 12 years imprisonment. This seems a rather short sentence regarding the fact that in the case of the manslaugther that turned out to be suicide in Nuenen the innocent husband received 12 years as well, Harold R received 13 years for the so called 'car trunk murder' and Aldo G. received a life sentence for supposedly ordering the death of two Brazilian coke traffickers (the so called 'A12 murders'), even though there is no hard evidence linking him to the crime and the true criminal behind the crime and self confessed murderer of 24 people, Filipo Cerfeda only received 10 years (the main part of which he may serve at home. Similarly Louis Hageman was sentenced to life on questionable evidence for 2 murders

Ed Louwes deserves a retrial? He deserves freedom

In an evening filling broadcast, Dutch newsprogram 'Nova' presented the facts in the 'Deventer moord' (Deventer murder) in wich accountant Ed Louwes has been convicted. As had already been clear to most people, except the judicial system and Peter R de Vries, the evidence on which Ed Louwes has been convicted to a 12 year sentence, was very very shaky if not non-existent.

Lucia de B must be retried

Lucia de Berk, the dutch nurse convicted to life imprisonment for the allegated murder of a number of patients should be retried.

The so called Posthumus commission in its report of today stated that the entire case is fraud with tunnelvision from the DA's office. From the start they were convinced that Lucia de B was guilty and their entire evidence gathering was based on that. Any evidence pointing to her innocence was disregarded or discarded.

The commission was especially critical towards the statistical 'evidence' in the case as only 1 statistician calculated the chance that Lucia was 'not guilty' on 1 in 340.000.000 This calculation was not shared by other, more scientifically renowed statisticians, who calculated it at 1 in 40 or 1 in 8. The statistics never should have been allowed as evidence, the Posthumus commission stated in its report.
There were no murders

Self proclaimed crime-journalist de Vries gets kicked in the butt

Peter de Vries gets kicked in the butt by Steve Brown: