Posted on 07/19/2002 2:17:47 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Friday, July 19, 2002
By JANINE A. ZEITLIN, jazeitlin@naplesnews.com
Marco Island police and Collier County court officials are at odds over who was to blame for the swift departure of a Saudi Arabian government official from the United States this week after his arrest on charges of sexual assault of a Marco girl.
Court officials say Collier Circuit Judge Ted Brousseau had no way of knowing Dr. Farouk Murad, 66, was a flight risk when the judge set a $50,000 bond Sunday. Brousseau didn't seize Murad's passport.
The only address listed on police reports of Murad's arrest was a post office box in Saudi Arabia.
Farouk Murad
Marco police thought they covered their bases by putting, "due to the nature of the crime, the suspect was given no bond" in the report, said Capt. Thom Carr, Marco's police spokesman.
Court officials interpret that this way: the bond will be set by the judge.
"I'm not going to sit here and run semantics with these people," Carr said. "If everyone wants to blame us, that's fine and dandy. We don't have any control in the bond hearing. ... It's real easy for lots of people to point fingers."
The captain said he thought denying bond to a foreign national was "a common practice."
Murad was arrested early Sunday on charges of lewd battery-sexual act with a child 12-15 years old, which upon conviction carries a maximum 15-year sentence, and false imprisonment of a child under 13, which carries a potential life sentence, officials and reports said. Both are felonies.
On Saturday, police say Murad, a longtime friend of the girl's family, took the girl, then 12, and her brother and sister, to his room at the Hilton Marco Island Beach Resort. Murad then sent her siblings to get ice while he kissed and groped the girl, a report said.
The girl turned 13 on Monday, said her mother, a United Nations criminologist.
Murad, a former United Nations adviser, posted a cash bond Monday. Investigators say Murad boarded a plane to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday afternoon.
Jerry Berry, Murad's criminal lawyer, said his client denies the charges and will return to answer them.
The United States doesn't have an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia so "quite frankly, (criminals) would have to come back to the country for us to get them," said Jill Stillman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Obviously, people flee to countries where we don't have extradition treaties for that very reason," she said.
If police thought the man would flee, they should have been at the hearing to say so, Senior Deputy Court Administrator Mark Middlebrook said.
"No one ever presented any of that information to the judge," he said. "It's incumbent on the arresting officer to clearly state his (concerns). In lieu of that, it should come from the State Attorney's office. That did not occur."
There was no discussion during the hearing of the possibility of denying a bond for Murad or seizing his passport or visa, according to attorneys at the hearing and recorded tapes.
In the past, Middlebrook said, passports or visas have been detained in bond hearings.
"It does happen at times if somebody lets the judge know the person is a flight risk," he said.
Had someone broached the issue, "the judge probably would have had some questions to ask," he said.
The girl's mother blames Marco police for not being at the hearing or telling her when it occurred. She was not told of his arrest until Monday.
"I hold those guys accountable for not giving me the information," she said. "I spent the night with my head in the toilet bowl wondering."
The mother's name isn't being published because she shares the same last name as the victim and the Daily News does not print the name of sexual assault victims.
The mother has been calling U.S. and Saudi officials to put pressure on the governments to bring Murad back.
Murad and the girl's mother worked together while he was president of the Arab Security Studies and Training Center, an academic institution that researches security issues in Riyadh, now the Naif Arab Academy for Security Sciences.
Murad also served on several U.N. committees on crime prevention but now lists himself as retired.
She's calling on judicial watchdog groups to take a second look at the judge's ruling. She thinks Brousseau should have stepped down from Murad's hearing because of his ongoing business relationship with Louis Amato, Murad's civil attorney. Amato is representing Murad in a civil dispute.
Court records show that Brousseau recused himself from Murad's civil case April 4 because of a business relationship with Amato. A letter from Amato's office regarding the case says that Brousseau and Amato own an airplane together.
J. David Gallagher of Tampa, the opposing counsel on the civil case, which was filed in 1999, said Amato disclosed the information and they filed a motion for Brousseau's disqualification. They don't know how long the relationship between the two existed.
Amato was listed as Murad's next of kin on his booking sheet. Amato initially denied he was involved in representing Murad in connection with the criminal charges, but after being presented with witnesses' statements he had paid the bond, Amato said Murad's family wired him the $50,000 and he paid the bond.
While Brousseau technically did nothing wrong by hearing Murad's criminal case because Amato wasn't at the bond hearing, ethically, it doesn't appear exactly right, ethics experts say.
"I'm sure he was probably staying within legal bounds. But for a sense of propriety, just common sense tells you he probably should have done the same thing again," said Aine Donovan, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics at Dartmouth College.
"Judges more than anyone else really need to have things clean ... for a sense of appearances because you're dealing with people's lives," she said.
Court officials say judges never look at the next of kin's name during bond hearings and wouldn't have remembered that Amato represented Murad.
Murad's arraignment is set for Monday, Aug. 12, at 8:45 a.m.
Sorry about the seperate links there..I did not have them all together before now. Now I do.
You tell em MFH!
DA a possibility as well, since someone was supposed to say something like "people request NO BAIL" and apparently no one did.
Marco police thought they covered their bases by putting, "due to the nature of the crime, the suspect was given no bond" in the report, said Capt. Thom Carr, Marco's police spokesman.
If they'd really wanted him to stay in the country, they would have added "extremely high flight risk" to that sentence.
Haven't you heard," the saudi's are our friends".
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