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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-29-08 10:37 PM
Original message
Jury at impasse in Venezuelan cash suitcase trial
Source: Associated Press

By CURT ANDERSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer

MIAMI - Jurors in Miami are at an impasse in the trial of a wealthy Venezuelan charged with acting as an illegal foreign agent in a scandal involving a suitcase full of cash. The panel said in a note Wednesday it cannot reach a unanimous verdict in the case of Franklin Duran ...

Read more: http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stories/102908/D944CEM86.shtml



Florida Jury Deadlocked in Suitcase Scandal Trial (Update2)
By Joe Schneider
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) ... Duran, 41, is accused of working as an agent in Florida for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government without registering with U.S. authorities. He is also charged with conspiring to silence Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a U.S. resident. Prosecutors said Antonini carried $800,000 in a suitcase from Venezuela to Argentina in 2007 to help presidential candidate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was elected Oct. 28, 2007. The cash was seized at a Buenos Aires airport ... The case is U.S. v. Maionica, 07-cr-20999, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami) ... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a7RVoft6sbPU&refer=latin_america


Jury at impasse in Venezuelan cash suitcase trial
By CURT ANDERSON – 4 hours ago
MIAMI (AP) ... Duran attorney Ed Shohat contended Duran was entrapped by the FBI and came to Miami only to help out a friend and protect business interests. The charges of conspiracy and acting as an illegal foreign agent carry a potential combined sentence of 15 years in prison ... http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9Awbdmy2MbrUsgADdyW9zP_g6oQD944ENE82


Hung jury in Venezuelan suitcase trial?
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com
... ''We cannot reach a unanimous verdict,'' the 12-member jury said in a note read by U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard. No other explanation was given. Lenard told the prosecution and defense that she will instruct jurors to continue deliberations on Thursday, noting the trial lasted almost two months and deliberations just four days ... http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/746166.html



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clear eye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-29-08 10:41 PM
Response to Original message
1. How does the U.S. have standing to bring Duran to trial?
Interesting reading. Thanks.
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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-29-08 11:42 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Claim is he broke US law while in US: namely, if one acts on behalf of a foreign power,
one must register. Vague, catch-all law: it's what the Administration threw at Susan Lindauer when she wrote her cousin, White House staffer Andy Card, a letter about Iraq policy

What's interesting is the long complicated story: US citizen Antonini gets caught trying to smuggle undeclared $$ into Argentina, flees back to US, contacts FBI. Argentina demands his extradition, US refuses, Interpol puts up his mug. Airport security officer who found $$ becomes celebrity, gets breasts augmented, poses in Playboy. FBI begins unspecified investigation into the suitcase story, ewith Antonini wired. At this point, Duran et al supposedly attempt to interfere with the FBI investigation -- but aren't charged with that -- instead they are charged with being unregistered foreign agents, a charge to which Duran's co-principals pled

Curiously, the allegation made in support of the charges are much much sexier than the charges. To make the charge stick, the US tells a story somewhat as follows: US citizen Antonini was helping Venezuela smuggle cash to influence elections in Argentina; when he came back to the US, Venezuela sent agents to keep him quiet. To support this tale, the US has some tapes claimed to implicate Venezuelan intelligence and (of course) the guilty pleas. This, however, does not explain what the FBI was supposedly investigating, before the alleged pressure was applied to Antonini, since (after all) Antonini seems to have violated Argentinian law in Argentina, not US law in the US. Antonini has told inconsistent stories about whether he knew his suitcase contained cash

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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 05:17 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. All this is being conducted in the same place, by the same people who planted the
"informant" among a small number of poor men, some immigrants, living in Miami, and claimed they were terrorists who intended to blow up the Sears building, for some reason!

It was their contention they went along with the "informant" because he was promising them a lot of money, clothing, boots, vehicles, etc.

First trial, hung jury or something. Second trial, similar results, and yet the federal prosecutors are holding this sword over their heads, leaving it in the air that they may very likely try them all over again, for the THIRD time. Apparently they are hoping everyone who heard about the first two trials will have forgotten all about this fiasco.

Bush's administration seems to view Miami as a great place to hold trials that would get laughed out of town anywhere else!
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clear eye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 09:05 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. Incredibly stupid to use U.S. citizen to carry the cash
My guess is that the conspirators thought that someone w/ a U.S. passport wouldn't be searched. They didn't go the step further to think of the implications if he did get caught (that the U.S. gov't would never pass up the chance to bloody Chavez's nose). A little thing like the crime not being in their jurisdiction or a violation of U.S. law would never stop this administration's DOJ. But maybe that's the reason there is a holdout in the jury--one person thinks the government violated the law in picking up and interrogating Antonini to begin with.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 07:44 AM
Response to Original message
4. We need an investigation of this Bushbot prosecutor. There is only one purpose to this trial--
to get headlines that slander President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, because they are strongly allied, and are helping to foil dirty rotten Bushwhack schemes all over South America, including, most recently, their civil war plan to topple the Morales government in Bolivia, and these leaders are also key players in the new South American "Common Market" (UNASUR) (sans the U.S.), the Bank of the South (which is shoving the World Bank/IMF loan sharks out of the region), and other efforts at Latin American self-determination and social justice.

This trial may also be part of a pre-war psyops campaign to hit the Obama administration with an in-progress oil war in South America, or to instigate such a war with private means once he is in office.

The case against Franklin Duran stands on the thinnest of reeds--that he supposedly TALKED TO some people in Miami about an alleged political corruption incident in Argentina, and FAILED TO REGISTER WITH THE U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL AS AN AGENT OF A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT--with NO EVIDENCE that he was acting on behalf of any government, let alone in a paid capacity. What this is, is an invented jurisdiction, involving U.S. courts in a strictly South America political matter. And its sole purpose is to MAKE HEADLINES slandering the presidents of Venezuela and Argentina.

Do we not know that the Bushwhack Department of Justice has been politicized and used to slander Democrats, and indeed to falsely prosecute and jail a Democratic governor, and to hamper the excellent work done by ACORN and others in registering poor voters?

This is the SAME THING. The Department of Justice--once a sacrosanct agency, concerning which both Democratic and Republican administrations have always pledged bipartisanship and objectivity--has been turned into a whore for Bushwhack plots and schemes. This entire "suitcase full of cash" incident is more than likely a dirty trick designed by the Bush-purged CIA. They sent an operative (--a two jaguars in the driveway, Miami mafia character named "Guido") to Venezuela with instructions to get a suitcase packed with about $700,000 in cash onto a private jet carrying Venezuela oil execs to Buenos Aires. He got caught by a customs agent in the airport, talked his way out of an arrest and went back to Miami, where he turned up as state's witness against several Venezuelans and a Uruguayan, whom the BUSHWHACK DoJ then prosecuted on this vague and probably unconstitutional charge of being unregistered foreign agents. The most sensible thing I've heard about this caper was said by Venezuela's vice president early in the story. He said that, if they had wanted to take cash to Christina Fernandez for her political campaign, they would have taken it on President Chavez's plane the next day, with diplomatic immunity. (Chavez visited Argentina in the days immediately after this incident.) Fernandez never got the cash, and she won handily anyway. She is furious about this slander, and has repeatedly complained to the Bushfucks to stop dragging her name and Argentina's into this trial. She cannot defend herself against the Miami Herald!

It is no fucking wonder that the jury in the case is deadlocked. They'd probably all like to get home as fast as they can and take ten hot showers, to wash off the slime that has been thrown around in this courtroom. This is not just a complete waste of taxpayers' money, it is a disgrace! And it may well be a crime in itself--false prosecution, false charges, spying and phone tapping, and prosecutorial lies and dirty tricks--and who knows where that $700,000 in cash came from, hm? Is it our tax money? Is it drug money? Goddammit, I want an investigation of this.

The Bushwhacks have been unable to kill Chavez and topple Venezuela's democratic government--so they resort to this sort of shit--psyops, disinformation, slander. They have been unable to "divide and conquer" the strong alliance between Venezuela and Argentina, or any other Venezuelan alliance (and it has many, including a strong alliance with Brazil). They have been unable to kill Evo Morales, and topple Bolivia's democratic government. They have had no success at painting Chavez and Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, as 'terrorist lovers,' despite an elaborate scam involving doctored computers. They have been unable to influence the popularity of any of these new leftist leaders, who have approval ratings among their people ranging from 60% to 90%! And their efforts to do so are, for the most part, being laughed at from one end of Latin American to the other. When leftist Fernando Lugo got elected president of Paraguay this year, overturning 61 years of corrupt rightwing rule, Evo Morales sent him the following message: "Welcome to the Axis of Evil!"

This dead rat carcass stinking up a courtroom in Miami is the smell of Bushwhack failure--the result of their evil, murderous, greedy, powermongering, warmongering intentions. And we can tell just how well these South American democracies are functioning--and the prospects for the success of their "Common Market"--by the colossal failure of every Bushwhack scheme to divide, slander and destroy these new leaders and fuck over their countries once again.

The Miami trial of Franklin Duran sums up the anti-democratic, devious and mindbogglingly corrupt Bush regime. It is a rotting corpse. And I hope to God, come January, Barack Obama has a lot of fumigators on hand. It's going to take four years just to clean house.
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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 08:16 PM
Response to Original message
6. Fla. judge tells cash suitcase jury to keep trying
MIAMI (AP) — ... The jury told Judge Joan Lenard in a note Wednesday they can't decide the guilt or innocence of 41-year-old Franklin Duran. Lenard told jurors Thursday in a reply note that they should keep trying. If they can't reach a verdict, a mistrial will be declared and a second trial scheduled ... http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9Awbdmy2MbrUsgADdyW9zP_g6oQD944SA200
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 09:38 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. Vene. opposition news channel refused to acknowledge satellite story & pushed this story, instead.
Patrick J. O'Donoghue's news and views from Venezuela -- October 30, 2008
Patrick J. O'Donoghue

2008-10-30 20:58:51 - Bolivian President, Evo Morales was a special guest of President Chavez yesterday to watch the launching of the Simon Bolivar satellite in China at noon Venezuelan time. Both presidents observed the launching from the Lupena tracking station in Venezuela's southeastern Bolivar State. Venezuela is the fourth Latin American country to have its own satellite and, Chavez proclaims, the satellite has given Venezuela a new leash of independence.

The opposition 24-hour TV news station, Globovision has been criticized for sidelining the launching of the satellite and giving greater prominence to the $800,000 briefcase trial in Miami. Government sources indicate that the scant coverage of the satellite launch coincides with Globovision's editorial line to downplay any government achievement and highlight all the negative aspects, big and small, that could embarrass the government. However, the main opposition newspapers, El Nacional and El Universal have given prominence to the satellite launching recognizing its news and historical value.

http://www.pr-inside.com/patrick-j-o-donoghue-s-news-and-r890405.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~

Amazing, isn't it?


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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-08 10:01 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. Good info! Thanks!
:)
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