Wanted couple should not be sent away - lawyer

The defence counsel of a French spiritual leader and his girlfriend facing extradition proceedings yesterday said his clients would die should they be made to return to France.

French Alan Schmitt, 49, and Belgian Laurence Liegeois, 42, were arrested at their home in Naxxar on January 7 on a European arrest warrant.

Mr Schmitt allegedly escaped judicial custody following a conviction for kidnapping and being an accomplice in a group that committed a crime.

Addressing a news conference yesterday defence council Emy Bezzina said that armed police officers barged into the house where the two lived in a community in Naxxar waking everybody up at 6 a.m. and invading their privacy.

The community included two minors – a boy aged seven and a girl aged nine and four dogs. Pepper spray was used damaging furniture and injuring the dogs.

Dr Bezzina said that two sentences against Mr Schmitt, who was 95 per cent blind and suffered from acute diabetes, and Ms Liegeois, had been given by the French court in their absence. The two, he said, were accused of crimes they did not commit.

These people, he said, were serious people who lived a communal life, organised charity events, helped the YMCA and they could not be called criminals.

Nothing was found by the police during the search of their house, he said.

He said that as their legal counsel, he had been instructed to do his utmost for the two not to return to France.

Mr Schmitt and Ms Liegeois loved Malta and they respected the Catholic Church. Their countries, on the other hand, shunned religious people and society assaulted them.

These people, Dr Bezzina said, were persecuted for their ideals and they should be assisted to ensure that their freedoms were safeguarded.

He also pointed out that the conditions the two were being kept in were horrendous with the cells at Mount Carmel Psychiatric Unit being extremely cold.

No heating was provided even though Mr Schmitt was a very sick man.

Ms Liegeois, who was also Mr Schmitt’s nurse, was being kept at Corradino and was finding it hard to keep her vegetarian diet.

Members of the group who lived with Mr Schmitt and Ms Liegeois were present for the news conference but refused to give details about the group or their life.

See also:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100108/local/police-use-pepper-spray-to-arrest-wanted-couple