Maxwell Mccord - new entry on our webpage

Based on a comment given on our blog we investigated the case of Maxwell Mccord. Based on our finding we accepted this case on our webpage.

Here is the entry:

Maxwell Mccord emigrated to the United States representing Danish firms abroad. Danish firms have learned a lot from Japanise firms. The general rule is that the manager stationed abroad is that he doesn't speak the language abroad because he is the embassdor for the head office back home. He must not be compromized by local customs or even bribed. To translate his orders he has subordinate doing the unpleasant job.

Mr. Mccord was an exception and perhaps that's the reason that he ended up in trouble. Maybe he offended some local business partners and they decided to frame him. He had to spend 3 years in jail accused for the murder of his wife before he was aquitted. The reason for him being charged with murder seems to be based solely on the fact that he was a foreigner.

Justice was served in the end but he is here to find because his arrest hurt the possibilites for the Danish industry as whole. It prevented our businesses from playing a major role in this market and cause our industry to rely solely on local employees which are expendable.

Rather surprising at that time there was little involvement from the Danish authorities regardless of the fact that Danish jobs were on the line and the legal system in the United States is designed so it is rather difficult to achieve another result in the appeal than the orginal sentence handed out by a lower court. Had Mccord been found guilty it would have been difficult to achieve the correct result later.

This case learned Danish firms that local firms sometime will go to the full extend to protect the local market. Today youth are warned against working abroad where legal protection often is of another standard than at home.

Second it learned the Danish public that holding a Danish passport is not guarantee that you are safe from being victimized by local dirty politics.

References:
Drabssag mod dansker ved at være slut, BT
GOOD NEWS - Florida - Maxwell McCord, Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Denmark Watching Weston Man's Murder Trial, WPLG local 10 news

Is an emergency team for exchange students and other Danes needed?

The answer to this question must be Yes.

Once a Dane is abroad they don't enjoy the same level of protection as in Denmark. Because Denmark is properly the most sophisticated country when it comes to legal protection, the citizens living or traveling abroad will almost in every case suffer when it comes to just a little contact with local authorities.

When looking for sources related to the show trial in Miami, I found a blog entry demanding better legal protection of Danish citizens abroad regardless if they only had witness a crime. In general Danish citizens should not involve themselves with foreign matters regardless if they can help or make the matter worse. The Camilla Broe cases is a fine example of that a person is placed in a situation where none of the options available at the time can be chosen without the risk of prison or death. I have quoted the blog in full, because I feel that the viewpoint is important both for the Camilla Broe case, but also if being an exchange student should be an option in the future for any youth.

Right now a Danish woman, a former exchange student is detained at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

Why is she there?

Back in 1986 she entered the United States as an exchange student. Her letters back to
Denmark made the family relocate to Florida where the father was a valued worker. Instead of returning back to Denmark, she remained in Florida and worked in various job.
It was a critical error.

First being exchange student is like owning an ant farm. As an exchange student your purpose is to study the native and often primitive culture. It is not for fun that a full year in a United States high school awards you no credits when returning to Denmark. The curriculum in Danish High Schools is very advanced compared with any kind of education offered in the U.S. Second of all High School Students study for tests instead of taking a critical and analyzing approach to both the teacher and the texts. Third but not least the U.S: High School have no Friday bars like the Danish Schools so the students cannot socialize and unlike Denmark it results in students becoming isolated and some incidents involving shootings done by marginalized youth.

But as an exchange student you should settle with this monitoring of the foreign
culture and not interact or socialize with persons in it. The situation can be compared with the Prime Directive known from Star Trek, but replace pre-warp with plus 500 years of civilization. Of course socializing with the host family cannot be avoided, but exchange students should be content with that. For some this long period of semi-isolation is too much and that is exactly why the relatives in Denmark should pull the exchange student from the exchange program at once.

Camilla Broe did choose to enter a relationship with a man who turned out to be very violent. In fact you can read from a transcript made in a related case how he threatened another man.

Then there is the smuggling operation she is charged with. In fact the first set of charges spoke of conspiracy. Now it is changed to other charges to justify the extradition process. Conspiracy is not a crime in Denmark and that’s why the new set of charges was fabricated within 24 hours before she was extradited.

What did happen was that this man, she had a relationship with, did smuggle drugs into the United States. She lived of the profit due to the relationship as a kind of golden bird in a cage. Once he was arrested she was able to leave the country, which she did in 2001.

Just before she left, she was “asked” to testify against her boyfriend. In the link to the Supreme Court case you can see that the way the question properly was formed as a kind of threat. God only knows what they told her. But she did the only right thing at the moment. She secured the future of her child.

Some year later she charged secretly in Florida. Not until 2007 did anything happen in this case. At that time her boyfriend made a deal where he could leave jail and get deported to Italy where he lives today in exchange to cook enough charges against her, so the charges became so severe that it could justify an extradition process.

Then followed two years of court proceedings in Denmark where the Danish court failed to see that the charge against her was conspiracy which is not a crime in Denmark.
The fact that a charge was in the paper, which does not exist in Danish law, should have stopped the extradition case because the extradition agreement tells that a certain charge must be on an act, which is a crime in both countries. That is not the case here.

She was extradited September 4, 2009. In order to prevent too much disturbance in the press, the government deported 22 refugees to Iraq a couple of days before so their path towards certain death occupied the Danish media and protesters. It seems to work.

She is expected to make a plea of “No contest” because she cannot afford a defense and in United States courts income does make a difference. Second of all the terms of the extraditions agreement grants her a return ticket to Denmark within 6 months after the judge had sentenced her. Also the extradition agreement states that she will be given a new sentence in Denmark because the laws in Florida are not judged as
fair.

The original question which was whether she did to the right thing, the answer must be Yes. Had she stayed in Florida, she might have been spared of the long extradition trial but in a world of plea bargains, which is considered of no morale to participate in, she would have lost anyway. She would have aided a foreign regime and might have criminalized herself by such an aid risking jail for certain paragraphs about espionage according to Danish law.

Now she is of course facing daily torture in a detention center, but it was a loose-loose situation once she broke the “prime directive” of an exchange student. There was no other way not taken.So now you can find all sorts of webpages with warnings for families considering the exchange student experience. People are doing a good job in reducing the number of teenagers in danger. But more can be done.

In United Kingdom they have a branch in their foreign department called Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They have an emergency team ready to rescue citizens in a potential dangerous situation abroad.

Such a service should be available to Danish citizens also, so they can be pulled from whatever situation before they are stuck with the poor choices Camilla Broe had. It doesn’t matter whether they just witness a crime. Whenever it brings them into contact with the local law enforcements, the emergency unit should be able to have them on a
plane within 24 hours bound for Denmark and safety.

The present situation is close to suicide for anyone considering to live or study abroad.

I support the creation of such an emergency team.

The Camilla Broe case - candidate for the webpage.

In recent letters I have received from the Institute, they are talking about adding Camilla Broe to the webpage for Danes who have been exposed of xenophobia.

Who is Camilla Broe?

Back some 15 years she went to the United States where she got engaged to a man from Israel. The next many years she lived as a wife who kept her house and was used as a commercial for the businesses of her husband.

She even gave birth to a girl.

The relationship was violent but because she was young and in a foreign country she was not able to break away from the relationship.

What she didn't know was that her fiancée was a drug lord. Her case is very similar to the well published case of Chantal McCorkel, who also stated to have been naive and in love. So when the police approached her and asked her to testify against her fiancée which is absolutely against all Danish tradition, how could she even if she had the slightest suspicion?

The other members of the drug-ring took plea deals and because they were just as afraid of her fiancee as she was they pointed at her to be the drug lord. Suddenly she was facing 63 years in prison and she wasn't even arrested!

So the first question we as Danes have to ask is: Why did they not arrest her back then if they were going to convict her to that many years in prison? We are talking of almost twice the length of a man jailed in Denmark for shooting 4 unarmed cops. He served only 33 years before being released.

Anyhow she returned to Denmark and started to live a modest life. If she had been the drug lord she would have no need to take a job and remain an unmarried single mom.

For many years she remained an unknown person with no police record and absolutely no involvement with the police. Then suddenly she is arrested in 2007 because the United States wanted it.

The reason for her arrest is that Denmark in the meantime has made a new law targeted against terrorism, which can send Danes to foreign states with no question asked about how the legal rights are protected.

The law did not exist when she lived in the United States. If we should compare it with something it must be the freedom fighters during WWII. In 1942 the Danish prime minister Vilhelm Buhl spoke of the freedom fighters as they were terrorists. After the war he was made prime minister again despite this speak. Suddenly the people who have believed in him based on his 1942 speech and acted on it were transformed from law abiding citizens to criminals and some were executed.

Camilla Broe settled in Denmark based on the laws at the present time. She never broke any laws while living in Denmark. Now she is suddenly labeled as a criminal and about to be sent to her death in Florida.

Death? What about the guarantees Denmark whipped the United States to accept? Is she not going to return to Denmark within 6 months of a possible conviction?

Well these guarantees are none existing. First of all we have the pleas of all the other gang members. Remember that they got decades in discount for naming her as their boss. Some in the prosecutor office made these deals and if Denmark hires a high profile lawyer, he could properly produce evidence which would expose people in the prosecution office as fools who have made deals with the real criminals instead of conducting a real investigation.

Because the job of a prosecutor is an elected job, this means that this job is used for politics. A prosecutor has to produce results if they want to go for the mayor job later in life. They need to silence her or get her to agree to whatever charges they can invent very quickly.

So the minute she arrives in Florida she will be put in the most dangerous jail in Florida among the most feared inmates to break her down. They will try all to get her to take a plea, so they can avoid a trial. And if I had to advice her, I will ask to the take the 63 years in jail regardless of the fact that most speak off that she is innocent.

If she refuse, it can take decades before the trial can start because it is 15 year since they last had knowledge of where the wittnesses were. All that time she would have to remain in a jail in Florida and her little daughter will be lost in the foster care system in Denmark, unless her father - the fiancée living a high profile life in Israel outside the reach of the U.S justice system demands her to be sent to Israel.

It is most likely that she will not survive being extradited to Florida. It is a sick justice system over there and both the prosecution and the other criminals think that she properly knows too much.

Sending her to Florida will be injustice and it would properly kill her.

But is that enough for her to earn an unfortunate place on the webpage?

Yes, I believe that she should be published on the webpage because the case against her in Florida will be based on plea deals meant to frame a foreigner. Being a young naive girl doesn't qualify her to be convicted to a prison sentence only suitable for a drug lord.

What is your opinion?

Here is two links to message boards where the case is debated:

Florida wants to execute a Dane (Fornits - in English language)
Dansk kvinde udleveret til USA (BT message board - in Danish - registration required)