Dominican cites laws for holding airline crew, passengers for months
12 Canadians could leave country soon
A dedication to the rule of law means the Dominican Republic had no choice but to detain a Canadian airline crew and their passengers for seven months after they reported contraband hidden on their plane, say representatives of the country’s government.
It would have been wrong to free the five Pivot Airline crew members — whose call to the authorities triggered the extraordinary case — and seven passengers until the matter was thoroughly investigated, the country’s prosecutors and diplomats argue.
Michelle Cohen, the Dominican ambassador in Ottawa, even denied the 12 Canadians had spent any time in prison, despite the detailed accounts of that harrowing nine-day experience some of them have provided — and the fact a bail hearing was held to determine if they would be released. Prosecutors had actually asked that they be kept in jail for a year.
A judge ordered the group freed on bail in April — a week and a half after they were arrested and imprisoned — on the condition each pay $23,000, surrender their passports and not leave the country.
Prosecutors, part of the Public Ministry, filed a motion in court on Friday that would end the case against the Canadians and allow them to finally leave the country.
The ministry was “acting responsibly, since the investigation had not obtained sufficient evidence to substantiate the accusation,” it said in a statement in Spanish. The request must still be approved by a judge, something that could happen as soon as Tuesday.
Pivot’s crew — flying a group of potential investors in an Alberta company and their guests back to Toronto — discovered a strange bag in a mechanical compartment of the CRJ-100 on April 5 and reported it to authorities. Dominican police discovered another seven bags, containing a total of 210 kilograms of cocaine, and arrested the Canadians as suspects.
The decision to end their “coercive measures” came after repeated attempts by defence lawyers to present in court evidence that Pivot says definitively cleared the Canadians — airport security-camera footage that purportedly shows someone unconnected to the group planting the bags of cocaine in the jet the night before it was supposed to leave. Pivot says its lawyers obtained the video in August, and that it’s been in police possession since April.
But the prosecutors’ statement and comments by Cohen suggested the Canadians could not have been freed any sooner.
“This case was at all times under the framework of the rule of law,” the ambassador said in an interview. “There is no way that a judge or the national prosecution could go above due process, above the law ... Judicial cases are not won in the media, they’re won in the courts.”
If authorities had simply dismissed the case prima facie (at first look), “we would be facing a scenario of frank impunity that would generate serious suspicions in society about the actions of the prosecuting body,” said the ministry statement.
Evidence of an exhaustive investigation by Dominican authorities, though, is not readily apparent. The crew and passengers say no one has even interviewed them, let alone laid charges.
As the defence, armed with the new evidence, tried over the last three months to ask a judge to dismiss the case, four consecutive hearings were cancelled because the court-arranged translator failed to show up, said a recent statement by the Canadian branch of the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA). A fifth appearance was called off more recently after the prosecutor herself did not appear.
“Unfortunately, the Dominican authorities continue to ignore what has been presented to them,” said the statement by North America’s largest pilots’ union.
Meanwhile, at least one government and a number of international human-rights and other watchdog groups, from Transparency International to the International Commission of Jurists, have painted an unflattering portrait of the Dominican legal system.
The World Justice Project ranked it 96th out of 139 countries on absence of corruption last year. A 2020 U.S. State Department report highlighted endemic corruption among judges, as well as “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary detention.”
The prosecutors’ statement also alleged that while the airliner was in the Public Ministry’s custody there was an attempt to take it out of the country with a “false flight plan,” calling that a criminal act.
No further details were provided. Pivot CEO Eric Edmondson said Monday he would respond to the charge once his crew are safely out of the island nation.
Both Capt. Rob Divenanzo and flight attendant Alex Rozov have told the National Post about their nine days behind bars after first being arrested.
The male Canadians were placed in a tiny cell with alleged drug traffickers, who they say constantly threatened and tried to extort money from them.
They and others have described the ordeal similarly to other media outlets, including CTV’S W5.
“We are totally horrified,” the judge at the bail hearing quoted passenger Ranya Aldayeh as saying. “We were here for vacation; we have no idea what is going on.”
Prosecutors asked then that the Canadians be kept in jail for 12 months — the men at Ccr14-anamuya and the females in the Higuey Public Prison for Women, the judge wrote.
But Cohen insisted they spent no time behind bars, saying the Canadians were simply held under an “economic warranty,” an apparent reference to the bail they eventually obtained.
“They were not in prison,” said the ambassador, who claimed that international media had misrepresented the case. “There was no custody.”