President Bush: Please Bring Ted Maher Home From Banana-Republic Monaco!

American Green Beret veteran and accomplished neonatal nurse Ted Maher has now been held 537 days without trial in Monaco's prison on trumped-up and false charges -- charges of causing the deaths of billionaire banker Edmond Safra and Ted's fellow nurse, Vivian Torrente on December 3, 1999. In truth, Ted fought valiantly against two armed, masked intruders to defend Edmond and Vivian and save their lives. During the struggle, Ted suffered severe knife wounds that required one hundred staples to close.

Billionaire banker Edmond Safra was cooperating with the FBI, who was investigating the IMF/Russian loans. Needing a convenient scapegoat for the murder of Safra, Monaco police subjected Ted to three days of grueling torture designed to extort a false confession from him. (see description in "BASIC TIMELINE" in Thread 1 - http://206.112.97.70/forum/a3ad8b097272d.htm ).

Monaco continues to hold Ted incommunicado, preventing him from sending or receiving mail. In fact, they restrict his communication with his family to one telephone call a week. This call is only allowed to last a few minutes and is always monitored closely to prevent any discussion of the case. Ted is forced by his jailers to take a psychotropic medication and is regularly "interrogated" by the Monaco judge -- Patricia Richet. Reports have been received that Judge Richet is a violent person who has displayed unstable behavior in the past. She allegedly has a history of assaulting a fellow judge, putting him in the hospital for a week. She also tears up letters from Ted's children in front of Ted rather than let him read them.

Hundreds of family, friends, work associates, parents of patients, and Army veterans who served with Ted have vouched for him as being a loyal husband, loving father, and an exemplary professional of great skill and compassion. Ted has also been defended by then-chairman of the House International Relations Committee Ben Gilman and Ted's congresswoman Sue Kelly, who have written Prince Rainier III of Monaco on Ted's behalf. Monaco has no evidence of any crime by Ted; they have no witnesses and no credible case against him. Even worse, Monaco has planted false evidence and suppressed vast amounts of exculpatory evidence -- even passing a special Monaco law that enables them to hold Ted four years without trial.

The Geneva prosecutor has said that Safra was killed for his cooperation with the FBI regarding the laundering through Safra's Republic National Bank of $4.8 billion in IMF loans to Russia.

Regardless of the reason "why," it is obvious that Ted Maher is a scapegoat for a murder by others. We are working to obtain his release and to correct the grave injustice being done to an American Green beret veteran and medical professional.

To read the "BASIC TIMELINE" that describes the events surrounding the night of December 3, 1999, click here:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 PennsylvaniaAvenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

E-mail: President George W. Bush - president@whitehouse.gov
V.P. Dick Cheney - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
First Lady Laura Bush - first.lady@whitehouse.gov
Mrs. Lynne Cheney - mrs.cheney@whitehouse.gov

Congresswoman Sue Kelly
1127 Longworth House office Building
Washington, DC 20515-3219
Phone: 1(202)225-5441
E-mail: dearsue@mail.house.gov
Assistant - Phyllis Coleman - phyllis.coleman@mail.house.gov

Amnesty International
322 8th Ave.
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 1(212)807-8400
FAX: 12124639193 or 12126271451
E-mail: admin-us@aiusa.org

House on International Relations Committee
Phone: 1(202)225-4561
Assistant: Aaron Blaine - blaine.aaron@mail.house.gov
Europe - Kelly McDonald - kelly.mcdonald@mail.house.gov

Senator George Allen (he helped obtain the release of Chinese scholar Gao Zhan)
website - "http://allen.senate.gov/"
FAX: 12022245432

His Serene Highness
Prince Rainier III
Palais Princier
Place du Palais
B.P.518
MC 98015 Monaco Ville
Principality of Monaco

Consulate General of Monaco
565 Fifth Avenue -23rd Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 1(212)286-0500
FAX12122861574
E-mail: info@monaco-consulate.com
Hon. Maguy Maccario-Doyle, Consul General

Monaco Guest Book
(You can write in English on the French page and scroll down to read. Please note they have a tendency to delete messages regarding Ted - not "fairytale-correct.")

Heidi has over 200 letters from people who have known Ted, from family, friends and neighbors, to fellow soldiers, medical colleagues, patients' parents, clergy.

Ted has never used drugs. Monaco prosecutor Daniel Serdet slandered Ted with that smear from the first--in Thomas Sancton's article in Time December 20, 1999--yet the charge was exploded by Princess Grace Memorial Hospital's toxicology tests' results of negatif negatif negatif shown on DatelineNBC "Who Killed The Billionaire?" November 21, 2000. The transcript is on the TedMaher.com site, though Dateline removed it from theirs soon after the broadcast, claiming a "lack of interest".

Ted had drafted a letter of resignation from the Safra team, as his hospital Columbia-Presbyterian had finished its nursing strike. Ted was headed home to his family--not concocting a bizarre caper to "curry favor".

Ted had Edmond Safra's respect.

The same false confession extorted in the three-day police beat three years ago was delivered today in a monotone--surprise, surprise.

In Monaco the state-supplied pre-tend de-fenders have pursued--not the truth--but an out based on the false confession. Donald Manasse said this month, "My job is to keep Monaco from looking bad." And that's the defense.

Monaco never allows recanting a false confession.

It would make the police look bad.

A friend who did a case in Monaco the year before Ted was seized and his wife kidnapped said his client had been extradited from South America on a verbal complaint and held indefinitely on the whim of the judge d'instruction, later to be released without charge or conviction.

"Monaco can do what it likes," my friend said, "It's a police state."

The defendants at the trials of Joseph Stalin confessed to elaborate plottings against the state. Signifying nothing save the power of the state.

FREE TED MAHER NOW, MONACO

DAY 1,085 WRONGLY IMPRISONED ON EXTORTED FALSE CONFESSION

Why does Monaco instruct its guards to awaken Ted every twenty minutes nights before trial?

To prevent him from sleeping.

Monaco practices the standard interrogation technique of the police state.

Note how the various reports state Ted Maher appeared confused.

Well, now, wouldn't we all, had we been awakened every twenty minutes the night before?

Yet, why would Monaco do this--even now--three years after the night in question?

Why did Monaco in the first place have to hold Ted in four-point restraint, catheterized, sleep-deprived while it kidnapped his wife, stole her U.S. Passport?

Why did Monaco tell Ted his wife was being strip-searched and tortured and would be detained indefinitely?

Why did Monaco display for Ted and his wife secretly-taken photos of the couple's children and play secretly-recorded tapes of the children's voices?

Because Ted's original account was true: thanks to Lily stripping security as previously noted (e.g., disconnect burglar alarm, send the entire security team away, disable the security cam inside, etc.) the two intruders' entry was a cakewalk.

Monaco had to extort a false confession, for in Monaco, a police confession is never recanted.

This is understood by residents and the press.

This is why Ted's perseverence is so admired.

His questioning of Sonia destroyed her composure--

After all, she's made three contradictory depositions in the fire report, and a series of subsequent additions and extensions and alterations and clarifications and. . . .

She was forced by the judge to admit all the monies she's been paid by Lily--

My, my.

The press numbers far more than the score which fits in the allotted area, so the others use pool reports.

There is much repetition of boilerplate slurs.

It is all based on the non-recantable false confession.

The police destroyed their emergency call tapes for that day only.

The cell phone records to corroborate Sonia's hydra-headed jabberings are still suppressed.

While the court made Sonia admit to Lily's payments. And the court is showing some of the acuity of the judge who resigned and wrote the expose Judge in Monaco--

In which he noted his investigation into money laundering was terminated by higher authority when it touched upon Princess Stephanie.

It will do Monaco's reputation a world of good to release Ted.

And stop waking him up every twenty minutes--you've been asked more than once.

MONACO, YOU HAVE NO CASE.

Stop the gestapo wake-up calls already and release the innocent Ted Maher.

Although this article does not state that Maher signed any confessions under duress, it surely doesn't pose a pretty picture for Safra's "mourning" widow:

11/24/02: Independentco.uk

Focus: Richer than the Queen (and considerably better connected)

She's the world's wealthiest widow (£700m and counting), London's flashiest socialite and Monaco's star murder trial witness. But just who is 'Gilded' Lily Safra? Sonia Purnell finds out.

They call her the Gilded Lily. She is said to be the world's wealthiest widow, with a fortune estimated at £700m. In comparison to 65-year-old Lily Safra, even the Queen looks hard up, and rather less well connected. Driven round London in an enormous armoured BMW, Mrs Safra is protected 24 hours a day by a posse of bodyguards and by sophisticated security systems at her six-storey, £23m home in Eaton Square.

Four years ago, she was barely known in Britain. Today, she is among the most powerful people in London's social and philanthropic circuits. She has become friends with the Prince of Wales, lavishing money on his charity, The Prince's Trust, and rubs shoulders with Camilla Parker Bowles, Lord Rothschild and Sir Elton John.

Mrs Safra's influence is more significant than a few mentions in the diary columns. She is changing the tone of London. Under her influence, it is becoming more like New York, where social position is defined not by what you have, but by how much you can afford to give away to worthy causes. For instance, she donated £8m to Somerset House for the computer-controlled fountains in its magnificent courtyard, and managed to arrange, against fierce opposition, for it to be named after her late husband Edmond, a banker.

But such a rapid social conquest, proof, if it were needed, that money buys access to the highest levels of London life, is threatened by the trial being held in Monaco of the American male nurse who is accused of killing her husband in 1999. This week, Mrs Safra takes the witness stand, and high society across Europe is salivating at the prospect of any number of possible revelations about the Safras' rarefied world of private banking billions. Throw in mysterious clients, bumbling police, a socially ambitious widow, and the highly charged atmosphere of Monte Carlo and you could hardly hope for a more enticing mix.

Ted Maher, 44, who had been hired to help care for Mr Safra, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, has admitted he lit a fire in a waste-paper bin in his employer's Monte Carlo penthouse. He hoped to win Mr Safra's favour by pretending they were being attacked, then "save" him. But the fire raged out of control.

Mr Safra who believed assassins might be behind the fire, died with another nurse after refusing to leave his locked bathroom. His wife, who pleaded with him to leave, escaped unharmed. There have already been wild allegations that Mr Maher's wife was kidnapped by the Monaco police, and unfavourable comments that two out of Lily's four husbands have died in mysterious and tragic circumstances. She has also been sued by Mr Safra's three sisters over £14m they believed was owed to them from his will – although that is now resolved – and has fallen out with his brother.

There have even been murmurings about whether Mr Safra's great friend Prince Rainier intervened behind the scenes in a cover-up because he wanted to protect his principality's tax-haven reputation.

Questions have been asked about why Mr Safra's usual round-the-clock bodyguards were told to take that night off. And where are the security videotapes that should have recorded what happened?

So concerned is Mrs Safra at any possible further damage to her standing that she has hired the services of Prince Charles's spinmeister Mark Bolland (on the recommendation of Camilla and Lord Rothschild) to handle her image. He is already paid £120,000 a year by the prince for part-time PR consultancy, but he is expected to make much more from her.

It is all a far cry from her early days as Lily Watkins, the daughter of a Russian Jewish émigré, she tells friends, who made a modest fortune exporting British railway carriages to Brazil. Conflicting reports about her childhood suggest she was born in Mitcham, Surrey, or in Uruguay.

What is known is that she speaks five languages – English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese, and is working on Russian – and that she acquired her wealth from her four husbands. She speaks English with an indefinable foreign accent. She "charms charmingly" say even her critics, and one friend describes her as "a serious, clever, quite devout but tough person, not silly or giggly, who has dressed in sombre clothes since her husband died".

Another acquaintance said her determination to retain her youthful looks had left her face "with wide-open eyes and a slightly strange look that makes it difficult to tell exactly what age she really is. She has also taken to wearing a lot of black eye make-up recently".

Still X-ray thin – and fond of sporting a quantity of costly diamond and platinum jewellery – she started married life with Mario Cohen at 19, and they had three children. Then she became Mrs Freddy Monteverde, wife of a Brazilian hosiery magnate, who, says Brazilian police, committed suicide because he was depressed. He left her with £160m, but there were also unhelpful stories that Mr Monteverde had mysteriously shot himself twice in the heart and police had not arrived on the scene for almost seven hours.

A quick third marriage followed, but Mrs Safra had already turned to Edmond for financial advice. They married in 1976 and lived in a sumptuous six-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York, with a guest suite at the Pierre Hotel for friends. Mr Safra, a Lebanese-born Sephardic Jewish financier whose private bank attracted a mix of clients from royalty to film stars, had always led a quiet, workaholic life but his fashionable new wife soon became a leading player in the socially competitive charity circuit in Manhattan. Society began commenting on their "meteoric rise to social power".

Status was important; the Safras wanted the social cachet enjoyed by the Rothschilds. After all, the couple – worth an estimated £3bn – had all the required material trappings of the mega-rich, including their lavish hilltop mansion La Leopolda, which is claimed to have the best sea views in the south of France. It was built by King Leopold of the Belgians in the style of a Roman villa.

Since the death of her husband, Mrs Safra has continued to entertain on a lavish scale at any of her homes across the globe. Fortunately, Mr Safra reportedly changed his will shortly before he died, leaving a large part of his fortune to her, as well as to his charitable foundation. As long as she can get this lurid and exotic trial safely behind her, there will be no stopping her remorseless scaling of the social heights.

nicmarlo, thank you for the long and textured travelogue through Lily Mar Lane.

I note the curious phrasing near the end:

Fortunately, Mr Safra reportedly changed his will shortly before he died, leaving a large part of his fortune to her. . . .

Fortunately her x-ray thin aspidistra.

Lily changed Edmond's will to her benefit right before his suspicious death.

He objected, they argued, he surrendered, she washed her hands of him.

Lily changed their citizenship to Monagasque effective that day.

She sent the security team to go enjoy those spectacular sea views at La Leopolda that day.

Her paid agent Sonia pencilled in Vivian and Ted at the last minute that day.

And that locked bathroom door, the famous 3mm manganese armor plate door--

A panel of locksmiths said it was not locked--

And just who disconnected the penthouse burglar alarm July 1, 1999?

The head of Monaco Securite in his fire report deposition stated it was done that date--

Certainly not Edmond--he was very security conscious.

Just as is his lucky, enormously rich widow now:

Driven round London in an enormous armoured BMW, Mrs Safra is protected 24 hours a day by a posse of bodyguards and by sophisticated security systems. . . .

She lavishes upon herself the security she stripped from him.

For if there are no villains, only lone nuts, such security is not needed.

The villains were hired; the lone nut was manufactured.

The eighth richest woman in the UK can't close her eyes--

Partly because of the plastic surgery.

Partly because if the locked door was not locked,

perhaps the conversations she and Sonia had with Edmond and Vivian. . . .

. . . .never occurred?

To do list:

1) Pay Sonia $100,000--check

2) Pay Vivian's husband--$2,000,000--check

3) Cremate Edmond--check

4) Manufacture scapegoat--

. . .unable. . .to. . .close. . .eyes. . .

Speaking of memory, a good memory is a sine qua non of an effective liar.

Sonia wouldn't have to keep changing her story if she'd just stick to the truth.

Were there actually any calls at all with Edmond and Vivian from Sonia or Lily?

Let us see the cell phone records.

For Vivian died--not of asphyxiation--from strangulation.

The infusion of her thyroid, the combat bruising--she was strangled to death.

By whom?

Ted had been rushed to the hospital at five a.m.

Sonia claims to have talked with Vivian at 6:30 a.m.

Who killed Sonia? Because it certainly wasn't Ted.

Do they really think we'll accept that a Parkinson's patient at Edmond Safra's age committed that murder?

There is a limit.

Just as the police emergency tapes would support Ted's repeated attempts to summon help from intruders,

Cell phone records would explode the myth of Sonia and Lily's calls to Edmond and Vivian.

The locked door was not locked--per experts.

The nurse on drugs was not on drugs--per hospital report.

The nurse dead of asphyxiation was strangled.

Why was Edmond cremated and buried in Switzerland against his wishes?

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