7 News Belize

Chief Magistrate: Extradite Mark Sewell
posted (September 30, 2011)
Margaret McKenzie handed down her final decision as Chief Magistrate today and it was a bombshell: ordering the extradition of 41 year old Mark Sewell to the United States.

Sewell has been in at the Kolbe Central Prison since 2007 fighting extradition - but today he ran into a dead end when the Chief Magistrate issued a 13 page judgment saying that a prima facie case has been established against him.

His attorney was Arthur Saldivar but he was represented by Dickie Bradley who today told us that they plan to continue to appeal:..

Dickie Bradley, Attorney
"In any event what has happen is that the Chief Magistrate has made a ruling that on the basis of the what is referred as the bundle which is thousands of documents in this particular application that she is satisfied that the bundle establishes what in law is required to be establish. Merely that there is an offence or offences allege against Mr. Seawell which falls under the list of offences that are extraditable. She has also come to the decision that on the basis of what is contain in those bundles that on the face of it that that falls within the requirements that there is sufficiency for her to agree that the matter goes to the United States of America. I have no doubt in my mind that in fact Mr. Seawell's attorneys will go to the Supreme Court to challenge everything that took place in the inferior courts here in the magistrate court in regards to Mr. Seawell going to the United States."

"The extradition law is that when the Chief Magistrate made her decision just now, nothing can happen. I want to emphasize this "nothing can happen" with Mr. Seawell until after 15 days. That is the law and that is the treaty that is sign between Belize and America. We don't want nobody panicking that a strange vehicle went to the prison on Sunday and Mr. Seawell is not in his cell and so and so. I can't say that it can't happen but if it did then that would be a breach of the law and the treaty of this country. Mr. Seawell is entitled to two things; he has a period of 15 days to indicate to the Supreme Court whether he will challenge the decision or whether he will just go to the United States and fight the allegations against him. He also has a right under the laws of the country to ask the Supreme Court to grant him his freedom pending the outcome of all the deliberations that will take place."

Jules Vasquez
"So it may be years?"

Dickie Bradley, Attorney
"We are hoping it will be years."

Sewell was arrested in February of 2007 - and has been in jail since. Three years later, his 33 year old brother Gary was caught hiding out in Esperanza Village.

37 year old Duane Sewell was arrested in Miami in February of 2007, pleaded guilty and was sentenced on December 7, 2007 to 17 years in prison.

According to the indictment by us prosecutors, the Seawells ran a marijuana and cocaine smuggling business starting in 1994, and, from July 1996 until the time of the indictment, they recruited and employed couriers and chaperones from the state of Ohio to transport cocaine from Mexico.

The Seawells - it is alleged - hired recruiters who offered young people, often college students, all-expense paid trips to Cancun if they agreed to make a trip down to Belize where they picked up a pair of tennis shoes and travelled with that, back to the USA. The shoes contained approximately 1 kilogram of cocaine hidden in the soles. 69 of these so called shoe-mules were indicted along with the Sewell's - and many have been sentenced to jail time in the US.

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