Public Prosecutor reacts to the Amigoe article
PG: Publications do not square with the truth
DIARIO Aruba
12/09/2005

ORANJESTAD (AAN): Thursday, the Public Prosecutor sent a press release to all media, related to an article that appeared in the Amigoe newspaper, where it was published the Attorney General is involved in ongoing cases.

The release says the following: About the level of handling, the Public Prosecutor has decided that it is only the information department of the Public Prosecution that will maintain contact with the press and give information about penal cases.

This is done specifically so that the prosecutor can concentrate only on the investigation and also because in a small community, it is important for the prosecutor to remain outside the light cast by the media.

The information department is equipped with qualified people in the area of information and communications. All workers have to leave them to this handling.

In Holland, all prosecutors have to have them in the handling which was stipulated and it is not tolerated that prosecutors do not do this and do whatever they want. The AG is not involved in cases.

It is not true that the AG involved herself in cases that are ongoing. The AG did not ‘dismiss’ any case either. The AG does not have the authority to do so, only the prosecutor.

The AG does not permit any person or institution to influence the decision of the prosecutor. The AG was not involved in the decision in the cases of two suspects of the governing board office.

The AG does not involve herself in the decisions of the prosecutor, for cases. The AG demands that there is handling of this, and that all prosecutors use the same criteria when taking decisions in penal cases, which now is not the case.

The AG regrets that things that are not true are said about the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The AG emphasizes at all times that all members of the Public Prosecution’s office have to speak the truth at always, because the citizens have placed their trust in them.

What the AG is trying to do, is to make the Public Prosecution Office a well-organized and professional institution. The AG had encountered a Public Prosecution’s Office that is not organized.

When the AG assumed her work, she met a Public Prosecution’s office that was disorganized, where there was no supervision of the work performed by prosecutors, where it was not known how many cases entered, what type of cases these where, and what happened to this cases.

There was never a management plan, where all souls were working on the same yearly summary of four or five pages, where case dossiers were disappearing without anyone knowing where they went.

Cases remained dormant to later be dismissed, because time had elapsed. Work procedures were not fixed and almost no work rules existed for prosecutors.

On this side there was a number of instances where authorities were to conduct a penal investigation and that they wanted to do this, but they were frustrated by disappointing experiences with the Public Prosecution. The citizen complained that he made the complaint and heard nothing else.

The AG is working along with many other good workers of the Public Prosecution’s Office, who have the same objectives ahead of them, to fix all these matters that according to the AG cannot go on in an institution as important as the Public Prosecution’s Office.

The guide for this is the law and what the law prescribes. According to the law, the AG is at the head of the Public Prosecution’s Office and is also responsible for what the prosecutors do in the first instance.

Related to these responsibilities, the AG cannot permit not to work according to the law, saying that the law has to be applied in a creative and flexible way. Examples of bad use of power.

An example of bad use of power is when permission is given to detain a person for a punishable offense, with the objective to interrogate for another punishable offense.

Another example is when dossiers of a case end up (missing?) and after a lot of searching it comes out that the person is responsible is from the Public Prosecution’s Office.

When you let a case dossier be destroyed, along with a sentence card, this is also a bad use o power. Bad use of power is also when the decision of the judge changes and the sentence that the judge imposes is reduced. As boss of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the AG will never permit such practices.

Lastly, the release says that the AG was selected as ‘Woman of the Year’ in the newspaper The News in the year 1998 and in the newspaper DIARIO in 2003. The selection of the newspaper DIARIO was principally because the AG instituted an information department at the Public Prosecution’s Office.

In response to yesterday's Amigo article:

ARUBA – Justice-minister Rudy Croes (MEP) gave the public prosecutor
(OM) till December 17th the time to solve the internal problems. The
conflict between chief district attorney Karin Janssen and Attorney
General Theresa Croes-Fernandes Perna has been going on for six months
already. The minister is now threatening with taking measures against the
chief district attorney, because the Attorney General (PG) is her
superior.

One of the reasons for the conflict is the way the media was
informed in the Holloway-case. Janssen, who is a media-officer in the
Netherlands, is of the opinion that it was not professionally done. The
conflict escalated when Janssen was interviewed by the Nova. The OM then sent
Janssen’s cellular telephone number to all the local and international
media that was present. “Now that she has spoken to one journalist, she
might as well speak to all of them”, said OM-media information official
Mariaine Croes, daughter of the Attorney General. At that moment,
Janssen was up to her ears in the investigation on the disappeared Natalee
Holloway and got in trouble because of this. It was decided shortly
after that the OM would only give written information on this case. Another
reason for the conflict is that Janssen is of the opinion that the
Attorney General is too much involved with current investigations instead
of working on policy level. She resents at the PG interfering
with the case of two suspicious MEP-supporters that made anonymous
threats by phone from the Government office. The PG dismissed this case
without consulting Janssen. Former chief of police, Jan van der Straten
also clashed with minister Croes about this.