Joseph Budna, in September, his attorneys in Belize sued the Government, the commissioner of Police, the Minister of Home Affairs and various police officers for violating his constitutional rights for his unlawful abduction. The suit asks the court to make a declaration that that Budna was unlawfully arrested, tortured, denied assistance, kidnapped, and expelled from Belize to Guatemala, It also asks the court to order government to ensure Budna's return to Belize "through legal and diplomatic means", and hold an inquiry in his unlawful extradition to Guatemala. It also asks for damages and costs.
Well, today a motion to strike out the suit was taken before Justice Martha Alexander at the High Court.
He appeared with his attorney Eamon Courtenay who outlined the various grounds upon which they are asking for a strike out:
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney at law
"The application is to strike out the ace against minister Musa and broadly speaking on 2 bases: the constitution of Belize says if you have a constitutional claim or any civil claim against the state the proper party as the defendant is the Attorney General and no other government functionary. And so a matter of law we said that the case is not properly conceived as against the minister. Secondly, there is a very long affidavit from Mr Budna I think it is 149 paragraphs long. And of that there are about 10 paragraphs that allude, and, I repeat, allude to minister Musa. The fact is that there is no evidence that is before the court that in any way calls or provides evidence that minister Musa was involved in whatever happened to Mr Budna. And so we also submitted that as a matter of fact there is no basis for the case to continue against minister Musa. I think we made the point that this is a constitutional matter. It was filed from last year, we applied to strike it out and they provided no evidence in answer to Mr Musa's position that there is no case against him and so we asked the judge to strike it out because there just really is no evidence against Minister Musa."
"You are alleging that someone kidnapped you, you are alleging that someone tortured you, you are alleging that someone breached at least 4 international conventions. The person says I will strike it out and the answer is don't strike it out, later on I will tell you the evidence. As I said to the judge, many things have been said in the street, street facts do not constitute evidence and Mr Budna should get his tackle in order and bring evidence if he has any. It is not a matter of saying you breached my constitutional rights, you must defend the case but I am not going to tell you now what my allegations against you are. That's a joke."
