A Guelph pilot, “arbitrarily detained” in the Dominican Republic since an April cocaine seizure aboard his plane, will have to wait to learn if he and crew will have their bail revoked and be sent back to prison.
In an email update to GuelphToday, Pivot Airlines CEO Eric Edmondson said the bail revocation hearing of Rob Di Venanzo and four fellow crew members held Thursday was adjourned because the prosecutor failed to arrange for translation services.
“While we are relieved that our crew has not yet been forced to return to inhumane and unsafe jail facilities, we remain deeply concerned for their safety,” he wrote. “We expect the court will return to their decision in a matter of weeks, and there is a significant risk our crew will be returned to detention facilities housing the same narcotics criminals they informed on.”
During a trip to the Caribbean nation in early April, Edmondson previously explained Di Venanzo reported a fellow crew member’s discovery of cocaine to Canadian authorities, which was followed by a Dominican Republic police raid and the arrest of everyone on board the plane.
About 200 pounds of cocaine was seized, confirms a news release from Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control.
Reports of their treatment in jail include being kept in crowded cells measuring 13 feet by 13 feet, undergoing numerous threats and extortion attempts from inmates, deprivation of food and water, and being limited to the area around a hole in the floor used as a toilet.
In the video statement released last month, a crew member states they've not been charged, questioned, interviewed or interrogated in relation to drug smuggling at that time – something Edmondson said remains true today.
“As recently as last Friday, our crew received direct threats against their lives from an inmate who had previously extorted them within the prison,” he wrote. “Pivot Airlines has now completed an independent third-party investigation which proves our crew’s innocence, yet the Dominican authorities have failed to even interview the crew.”
Though appreciative of “support” the federal government has shown for bringing the crew back to Canada, Edmondson feels it has “not been enough” and calls for action.
“Now is the time for the Canadian government to get our crew home. Together with the crew, their families, and their unions, we are calling on our government to stand up for Canadian lives,” he wrote. “It is entirely unacceptable for the government of Canada to continue defending a legal process which has been internationally recognized as corrupt, and unsafe for witnesses.”
