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Said Musa should not stand trial for theft. That was the order of Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh this morning at the conclusion of a judicial review brought forward by the former Prime Minister. In February, Belmopan Magistrate Earl Jones committed Musa should stand trial in the Supreme Court on the single charge of theft of ten million U.S. dollars. Musa’s attorneys, led by Senior Counsel Edwin Flowers, had submitted to the CJ that Jones had wrongly assumed jurisdiction in the case, had considered inadmissible evidence, had used insufficient evidence to support the theft charge and had acted irrationally by committing Musa but discharging former Housing Minister Ralph Fonseca who faced the same charge using the same evidence. It took just under two hours for the CJ to hand down his 53 page decision this morning.

Conteh found that Jones did not have jurisdiction to hear the case. As for the evidence put forward by the prosecution, the CJ ruled that collectively, the statements of Prime Minister Dean Barrow, his Chief Executive Officer Audrey Wallace as well as the deposition of former CEO in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Amalia Mai did not support the charge of theft. The CJ contended that one would be reading far too much into the meeting between Barrow, Wallace, Musa and Fonseca to conclude that any confessions were made. The CJ stated, “it would take an overwrought imagination to come to this conclusion.”

The court found that Mai’s deposition, which was described throughout as the lynchpin of the case was admissible but maintained that a careful read of her narrative again did not “remotely suggest theft by Said Musa.” But the Chief Justice did go one step further to declare that while a criminal action was not committed, Musa was guilty of political fecklessness by not disclosing how half of the Venezuelan grant was used, that is to pay ten million us dollars to the Belize Bank to settle the debts of Universal Health Services.

The CJ said, we quote, “his crime was to keep the people in the dark about the use of the money.” But that scolding from the high court didn’t dampen the mood of Musa supporters outside – who gave the court an unusual sound: the bugle’s victory fanfare.

Said Musa, Freed of Theft
“First of all I would like to thank my attorneys who never doubted my innocence and who represented me with distinction. I believe the ruling of the Chief Justice today is like a beacon of light in a country where we are seeing dark clouds of political mischief, injustice, and vindictiveness are like a shroud over the country. I want to thank all the Belizeans who stood with us and who prayed for us through the difficult times, the ordeals we went through.

As you all know, I will not mince words. This was from the beginning a political persecution. It was political persecution because they knew that I nor Mr. Fonseca stole any money and yet they charged us with stealing 10 million U.S. dollars. It is not the first time that I’ve faced political persecution. I’ve been through this before by this same callous vindictive UDP administration but in the end of course justice has prevailed. I want to say that people should know that a charge of this nature US$10 million that I stole, imagine, without even a police investigation. There was no investigation of this matter.

n fact the chief witness for the prosecution was the Prime Minister of Belize Mr. Barrow. He was so bent on having me charged that he volunteered a statement. But as you heard today from the Chief Justice after he examined all the statements that were put into evidence, there was no evidence of theft, there was no evidence that I dishonestly appropriated any money. Yes in the course of our administration mistakes were made and indeed one of them came out today, Chief Justice alluded to it; the fact that we did not inform the Belizean people at the time when this decision was taken. I accept that. I accept that yes there were political mistakes made but what I will not accept is that we did anything criminal or anything illegal. All my actions were geared towards solving problems, providing solutions, never for private gain and I think today has proven that.

I would want to conclude by saying that the ruling today is a tribute to the independence to the judiciary. Thank God we still have that in our country because the last bastion of our freedom is the rule of law.

What I went through, like I said I’ve been through it before, I am kind of getting used to it, but it is clearly a torturous thing that people should have to go through this where people would use the dirty politics in order to get at people when in fact we should be living in a country where we abide by the rule of law.”

Musa left with some political theatre and we’ll have the story on that shortly.