It’s Tjostolvs birthday on February 28th. Happy birthday! Unfortunately there is no one down there now to send something extra for the day, but maybe the boys have saved something special from when the seaman’s priest was there?
The weekend 12th-14th February, Furuholmen and Dietrichson had meetings with important supporting organizations for the guys. They are people who work with “The Death Penalty Project” and “Reprieve”.
They also met with Joseph Middleton who was interviewed by TV2. He cooperates with The Death Penalty Project. This is yet another lawyer who works for the case – he has his own law firm and he has written “Preliminary advice” and “Note on potential appeal grounds” among others. Both Middleton and Lehrfreund in Death Penalty Project are working on the juridical issues regarding the boys’ case, and Middleton has pointed out several offences that have been made in relation to the Congolese Constitution.
Both Reprieve and the lawyers mentioned above work in close contact with the British Foreign Ministry.
The Norwegian lawyer Furuholmen requested our British supporters’ assistance regarding the contact with Haag and UN’s Human Rights Committee and possible other organizations that could be useful to get involved in this case.
Furuholmen and Co was supposed to have a meeting with the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on February 15th. This meeting got postponed and was on February 24th instead. Present was among others Special Envoy Arild Øyen and a person from the Foreign Ministry’s Judicial Department. The question of transfer was one of the issues that were discussed. The matter of what kind of conditions (if we can get any conditions in a deal) we could get in a transfer. There has to be a complete defeat for the Norwegian Judicial System if the boys have to serve many years in prison in Norway for something they haven’t done, after the kind of court proceedings we have witnessed in Kisangani.
It’s been a long time since the boys appealed the last verdict. As far as I’ve understood it is the prosecutor has to write a support script for the appeal. And then the defenders can submit their support script. The prosecution still hasn’t submitted their support script to the appeal.
So we still don’t know anything more about when the next appeal will be.
It’s not easy to understand the Congolese Judicial System. And there is some confusion on whether there will be one or two appeals in Kinshasa when that day comes. There is the Military High Court and apparently a Supreme Court above that again.
The verdict in the appeal is finally translated to Norwegian. It wasn’t an easy assignment because that too is written in the “Kisangani-French” language.
As soon as we get it from Lawyer Furuholmen we will post it here.
So, as we are waiting we wish Tjostolv a happy birthday and good things in the year to come.
Kari Hilde French, February 26th 2010
