The Attorney General was among the country’s political office holders initially fronting the legal case against Saab.
The Attorney General of Cape Verde, José Landim has described the extradition process of Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab as politically motivated.
The Attorney General also admitted that Cape Verde may face consequences for defying the ECOWAS court ruling.
According to Platform Times, the Attorney General, whose office is responsible for executing the decision of the Government of Cape Verde to extradite Alex Saab to the United States, was among the country’s political office holders initially fronting the legal case against Saab.
In a document published by Premium Times in January 2021, Mr Landim had registered that the country is not in agreement with the body on the supplementary protocol on the ECOWAS court that empowers the code to entertain human right ramifications.
But, Landim in a latest comment back-tracked, as he highlighted possible political consequences for Cape Verde.
“From the beginning, we have always said that we apply the laws of Cape Verde and the Constitution of the Republic, and not laws that one wants to impose from outside. We apply what we understand to be the applicable law.
“Other consequences will be political, perhaps, but it is no longer up to me to answer that question. If there are other consequences, I’m sure the state will know how to react because I believe we are acting well,” Landim told journalists after a meeting with the President of the Republic.
However, José Manuel Pinto Monteiro, the leading Cape Verdean lawyer for Alex Saab, rebuffed the Attorney General’s statements, interpreting them as an unequivocal acknowledgment that the extradition process of Alex Saab to the United States is based exclusively on political assumptions.
“The observations of the PGR, today, are clear and unequivocal proof of the political nature of Cape Verde’s intervention in this matter”, so the lawyer reacted when asked to read Mr Landim’s statements, adding that “the fact is that the Alex Saab’s detention was, from the beginning, a political decision, and it is a political decision that must be taken to free him”.
“It was the executive [Government] and not the courts that decided to arrest [Alex Saab], it was the executive and not the courts that delayed the release on June 25, 2020, when INTERPOL cancelled the Red Alert for its American friends could issue (sic) the extradition request, and it is the executive, as the Supreme Court of Justice itself indicated, that must decide the final fate of Alex Saab.”
The lawyer also tells the PGR that, “if you intend to preserve Cape Verde’s good name, this is your opportunity to confess that you were wrong and to do the right thing.”
It could be recalled that the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECCJ) ruling on Alex Saab’s case, on 15 March, said the arrest of the diplomat was illegal, having been carried out without an appropriate Interpol Red Notice or arrest warrant.
It ordered Cape Verde to immediately release Saab, terminate extradition processes, and pay him $200,000 by way of compensation.
Aside from the ECOWAS judgement, the Geneva prosecutor’s office has also dropped the money laundering charges initially levelled against him.