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.")

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. It is a very quiet Thanksgiving here at our home because we have Heidi and her brother over in Monaco for testifying at the trial.

The court is trying their best to make Monaco look good to the world. Yesterday they had the Rabbi that is ahead of the Jewish faith in Europe testify in behalf of Lily Safra.She needs all the help she can get. Wonder if she paid him for his testimony?

Manasse is arguing with Griffith at the trial. He does not want the police or fire people to look bad and he believes that Griffith is doing that. Manasse also did not want Dr. Baden to testify today. He wants Griffith to be nice-nice about the strangulation of Vivian. He does not want to have anyone state that blood was spattered on Vivian and the DNA states it is from Mr. Safra.

This trial is run by the Monaco government and they have a lot of help from the Monaco defense lawyers. The defense lawyers are not helping Ted one bit. And it is those lawyers that made Ted stay with the forced confession.

Court TV is getting their information from the Monaco Defense lawyers. Court TV then is writing the lies that they want stated to the public. Can you imagine these lawyers are being paid by the Monaco government and also they received $10,000.00 from the Maher family?

Ted is not getting a fair trial -- he really is not even getting a trial. It is all a show that Monaco hopes will convince the world that they have the right person.

MONACO WHERE ARE THE TELEPHONE CALLS?

POLICE RADIO CALLS?

HOSPITAL TRUE DOCUMENTS ON TED'S INJURIES?

TED'S CLOTHES?

THE REAL AUTOPSY ON MR. SAFRA - NOT THE ONE THAT STATES NO BLOOD ON HIM AND HE DIED OF SMOKE? LETS HAVE THE ONE THAT SHOWS HE WAS SHOT IN THE CHAIR AND THE BLOOD SPATTERED ON VIVIAN.

LET'S SHOW THE CHAIR HE WAS FOUND IN AND LET THE DEFENSE CHECK IT OUT FOR DNA. COULD IT BE THAT YOU HAD IT DISAPPEAR BECAUSE IT WOULD SHOW BULLET HOLES IN THE CHAIR?

IF THIS CHAIR WAS FREE OF BULLET HOLES AND FREE OF BLOOD, IT WOULD BE AT THE TRIAL. ALL THE THINGS THAT MONACO IS HIDING FROM THE TRIAL PROVE TED'S INNOCENCE.

ALL LIES AND MORE LIES FROM MONACO.

EVEN THE TRIAL IS A BIG LIE.

FREE TED MAHER MONACO

FREE TED MAHER NOW, MONACO

DAY 1,090 WRONGLY IMPRISONED ON EXTORTED FALSE CONFESSION

Search for truth, or manufactured scapegoat?

Ted's initial account was of two intruders, repeated calls to police unanswered.

Police found two Middle Eastern men in the parking garage, and released them.

Police "lost" just the tape of emergency calls for the night in question, but have tapes for the nights before and after.

How could burglars enter without appearing on security tape?

The street cameras could be avoided by entering via the adjacent Hotel Hermitage.

The penthouse tapes were taken by police and not released.

Prosecutor Daniel Serdet said Ted was on drugs and said, "It was my own dark thoughts that did it."

Princess Grace Memorial Hospital tested Ted for drugs and alcohol and its results were negatif negatif negatif

When was the last time that you as an American--or anyone you know--used the phrase "my own dark thoughts"--?

But the penthouse was a fortress and Edmond had Mossad-trained guards--

The burglar alarm was disconnected July 1, 1999, and Lily sent the entire security team away.

But the doors were armored with 3mm manganese plate and locked--

Locksmiths said the doors were not locked (akin to the BATF that "broke out of plummeting elevators at Murrah")--

But Ted "set" the fire with the wastebasket/scented candle under the smoke detector--

Or not: the first alarm went in at 4:54, then Ted was rushed to the hospital for a hundred staples and numerous transfusions--

And the major conflagration occurred at six, an hour later.

The police allowed three hours from the first alarm to their "discovery" of Edmond and Vivian--

(4:54 a.m. to 7:45 a.m.)--why? Afraid of armed intruders? They stayed outside for three hours?

Oh, the door was locked--but, Lily was there continuously with the key--

And there was the crack antiterror unit--

No, there was an order from the police commander that no one enters, not even if the Prince orders it.

The police impede the entry of Samuel Cohen the security chief--they put him in handcuffs--

Cohen said if he'd been allowed to enter he could have saved Edmond and Vivian--

Apparently the police did not want that--

Why would Lily go to the expense of paying off Sonia, her agent who pencilled in Ted and Vivian at the last minute?

Why would Lily go to the expense of paying off Vivian's husband--if not to avoid an insurance investigation?

How is it that the deaths occurred the day the couple's Monagasque citizenship was finalized, the day the sale of Edmond's Republic to HSBC was finalized?

Why kidnap Ted's wife and threaten the couple's children, and why keep waking Ted every twenty minutes?

Three years for a so-called slam-dunk?

After Ted's original three-day interrogation restrained at four points, catheterized, sleep-deprived, he's seen by the visiting U.S. Consul:

Bruising of the face, bruising of the occipital region, bruising of the toes--

Why use torture, threats and sleep deprivation for a slam-dunk?

Monaco, your court gives kangaroos a bad name.

MONACO: NOSTALGIC? COME VISIT: IT'S ALWAYS 1984

In the Spectator Paper of United Kingdom November 28, 2002

FEATURES

Billionaires’Benidorm

Philip Delves Broughton, in Monaco for the trial of Ted Maher, finds that the principality is a rotten little retirement home for fat cats It was bucketing down in Monte Carlo and the casino was empty. Croupiers sat forlornly at the tables in the gilded Salle d’Europe and in the large private rooms at the back, overlooking a sheer drop to the Mediterranean. Several of them were horsing around with the sticks they use to gather in chips. The restaurant tablecloths were starched and laid with silver, but the waiters had no one to serve. A few old birds in dodgy leather jackets pulled away at the one-armed bandits.

In the bar at the Hôtel de Paris, I ordered a drink and listened to the pianist play ‘Strangers in the Night’. The only others there were a Japanese couple, he in a dinner jacket, she in a sparkling gown, who sat edgily in their chairs like guests who had overdressed for a party. Earlier that evening, Dominick Dunne, Vanity Fair’s aged society scribe, had sat in one corner drinking a Coke. He was in town for the trial of Edmond Safra’s nurse, Ted Maher. In court, Dunne sat up with the defence lawyers, though his studiously superior image came undone when he wandered through the courtroom on the second day of the trial with his shirt poking out of his flies.

He, though, is the reason why the rest of us reporters were there. Dunne has written at length about the Safra case — Maher has been charged with arson resulting in his boss’s death — ratcheting it up into the Riviera’s answer to the O.J. trial. The ladies with whom he lunches on Madison Avenue want answers.

Safra was a Syrian-born private banker who made billions finding devious and discreet ways to handle Middle Eastern fortunes. Not long before he died, he tipped off the FBI to Russian money-laundering through Wall Street banks. He also sold his bank, the Republic Bank of New York, to HSBC for about £6 billion. After Prince Rainier, he was probably the most powerful man in Monaco.

He had a controversial wife, Lily, who had been married three times, to her considerable financial advantage, before she married Safra in 1976. From Dunne you get the sense that certain people are just desperate for her to be linked in some dark way with her husband’s death. She is petite, with the kind of joyless eyes you see in people who go to too many benefit evenings.

But the real villain so far has turned out to be Monaco itself. It has come across as a rotten little retirement home, with all the glamour of hernia pants. You have never seen so many sad-looking billionaires. It is hard to foul up a series of rocky inlets along the Mediterranean, but Monaco has managed it, becoming a rich man’s Benidorm, with tower blocks crowding down to the sea. Even at night, with the lights on, it’s an eyesore. In Monaco surveillance cameras scan the streets and policemen are everywhere. When you check into your hotel, your passport is photocopied and filed; same at the casino.

Ted Maher got up on the second day of his trial and told the court that he had barely slept the night before. His guard, he said, had come by every 40 minutes to shine a torch in his face. His possessions had been rifled through the day before. One of his lawyers told me, ‘There are lots of people who want to see him shaky on the stand.’ Maher has already spent three years in prison waiting for Monaco’s legal system, which must either be shambolic or corrupt, to get its act together.

Journalists, businessmen and lawyers working in Monaco have complained for years that their telephones are tapped. The government grants and rescinds Monaco’s precious residency papers based on loyalty to its way of doing things. This has not stopped a new influx of Brits, who prefer Monaco to the rainy Channel Islands or the distant Caymans. Le Monde reported recently that the principality is encouraging British newcomers after its experience with men such as the Barclay brothers, who own the Ritz, the corporate raider Philip Green and the racehorse owner Michael Tabor.

Provided you can show a few hundred million in cash or equivalents, there are banks such as HSBC Republic to help you with the complicated citizenship procedures in Monaco. The British are now the third most numerous residents of Monaco, after the French and Italians. Monaco likes the British because, unlike the Russians, they seem clean and the principality wants to shed its image as the world’s money laundry. It flipped out over recent French government reports that called its banking system corrupt. It wants to be more like Luxembourg and less like Macao.

During his 53-year rule, Prince Rainier, 79, has turned Monaco into a tremendous earner for his family, who are reputedly richer than the Windsors. There is a National Council, elected by Monaco’s 30,000 citizens, but the Prince calls the shots. Worryingly for his subjects, he has been in hospital twice this year, and his son Albert looks woefully ill-equipped to succeed him.

Albert likes his Grand Prix, his tennis tournaments, supermodels and luxury-goods launch parties. At 44, he is yet to marry or provide an heir. Earlier this year, Rainier took out an insurance policy by changing the constitution to allow his daughters and their children to succeed Albert if he dies childless.

Rainier’s eldest daughter, Caroline, is the most presentable member of the family. Her two teenage children are already French paparazzi favourites. Her weak point is her third husband, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a belligerent German aristocrat who was caught peeing against the Turkish pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, prompting apologies from the German government to the Turks.

Then there is Stephanie, who has let her looks go from sexy Euro wild child to overworked welfare mum. For the past two years, she has shared a caravan with a circus elephant-trainer. But she left him this spring, moved back into the palace and started an affair with yet another of her bodyguards.

The Grimaldis’ family problems, however, are nothing compared with the damage to Monaco’s reputation done by the Safra trial. The police and fire services had nearly two hours to rescue Safra as fire crept through his flat. They bundled away his personal secretary, who was the only man with the keys to the flat, because he was carrying a gun. By the time they got to Safra, he was dead from smoke inhalation.

Georges Kiejeman, Lily Safra’s lawyer and formerly François Mitterrand’s, has been harrumphing and arguing against the judge in Monaco as if he cannot believe the travesty of justice unfolding before him.

Everyone involved thinks that Monaco is suppressing the truth because Monaco knows that it is nothing if not a place where rich old men can live safely in their penthouse flats. Otherwise, it is not just, as Somerset Maugham said, ‘a sunny place for shady people’, but an ugly, lifeless and dangerous one, too.

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