← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Otho_Isch
Thread ID: 9504 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-09-03
2003-09-03 18:43 | User Profile
[url=http://www.canada.com/vancouver/news/story.asp?id=8C2A81FF-2EC3-4225-940C-8CD3D7DFCA94]Seifert denied bail[/url]
A Vancouver man convicted of 11 murders at a Nazi prison camp in Italy during the Second World War was denied bail Tuesday after he was committed for extradition last week.
B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Thomas Braidwood decided that since Michael Seifert has not filed his grounds of appeal, the judge could not determine whether the appeal was frivolous. The judge refused Seifert's application for interim release pending his appeal.
Last Wednesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romilly decided there was sufficient evidence to commit Seifert for extradition to Italy, where he was tried in absentia three years ago and convicted of raping, torturing and murdering 11 people. Seifert, who had been out on bail pending the outcome of his extradition hearing, was ordered into custody by Romilly.
Canada's justice minister has 90 days to decide whether to send him to Italy.
Seifert's lawyer, Doug Christie, immediately filed an appeal notice of the decision.
At the end of the bail hearing, Seifert's son, John Seifert, asked to address the judge, complaining that his father, 79, isn't getting his medication in jail.
"They want him dead," the son told the court. Braidwood warned John Seifert he would be ejected from court if he didn't stop interrupting the judge and advised him to write a letter to the Crown about his father's medication needs.
Wayne Willows, a spokesman for the North Fraser Pretrial Centre, where Michael Seifert is being held, said Seifert currently resides at the jail's health-care unit, where he has access to a doctor and is receiving 24-hour nursing care.
"In no way are his health circumstances in jeopardy while at North Fraser," Willows said.
Outside court, John Seifert, a 45-year-old car mechanic, said the legal bills fighting the case since his father's arrest more than a year ago have financially ruined him and his mother.
"We have nothing left," John Seifert said. "My life is ruined. I can go nowhere. Everybody is afraid to talk to me."
John Seifert told reporters that when his mother tried to get legal funding for his father's case, his mother was turned down by seven Jewish lawyers.
He added the request for legal funding was supposedly turned down because his parents make too much pension income -- about $1,400 a month -- but pointed out that the government has helped fund the defence of an accused millionaire at the Air India trial.
"Every one of their witnesses committed perjury," Michael Seifert's wife, Christine Seifert, said of the Crown's extradition case against her husband.
At one point, she turned to a reporter and asked: "Are you a Jew?"
Michael Seifert, a retired sawmill worker, has lived in Canada since 1951.