Brazilian Justice Orders Passports to Be Returned to US Pilots in 72 Hours

Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, the two American pilots who have been retained in Brazil since the Legacy executive jet they piloted collided with a Boeing 737, which fell down in the Brazilian Amazon on September 29 killing all 154 people aboard, can get their passports back.

In a unanimous decision, the Regional Federal Court of the First Region, in Brasí­lia, decided, today that there’s no reason for the Brazilian Justice to keep the Americans passports, which were confiscated in Rio, at the beginning of October.

The pilots have been in virtual house arrest in a hotel in Rio since. The judicial decision requires that the documents be returned to the US pilots in 72 hours.

Federal chief judge Fernando Tourinho, federal judge Jamil Oliveira and the reporter and president of the session, Cândido Ribeiro, voted for the habeas corpus concession.

The documents had been seized by determination of Mato Grosso state’s federal police’s while authorities investigated the causes of Brazil’s worst air accident ever.

The Regional Federal Court believes that 72 hours are more than enough time for the Federal Police to still interview the pilots if they so wish.

While the two pilots are free to leave Brazil they must agree to go back to the country for further inquiry and judicial action if they are asked to by the Brazilian authorities.

Tags:

You May Also Like

The Agitator Is Quiet

Francisco Julião used to defend agrarian reform forcefully arguing that it had to be ...

Brazil Asks Balance from UN on Syria-Lebanon Affair

Brazil’s Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, expressed Brazil’s support for United Nations (UN) ...

Brazilian Plane with 155 People Fell Inside Indian Territory in the Amazon

Brazil’s Funai (National Foundation of the Indian) confirmed that the Boeing 737-800 of the  ...

Brazilian Expatriates Are a Main Reason for Less Poverty in Brazil

Despite some progress over the past two years, poverty in Latinamerica and the Caribbean ...

Brazil Calls Protectionism Poison and Not a Cure

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, admitted this week that trade ...

Learning to share

Brazil has a history of going it alone. It happened with the world monopoly ...

Machado de Assis, an Unlikely Genius from the 19th Century, Is Still a Brazilian Treasure

Now and then, man, nature, fate, and free will conspire to produce an unlikely ...

Brazilian Justice Can’t Tell News Reporting from Propaganda

A Brazilian court fined the newspaper Agosto, on June 5, US$ 13,400 for publishing ...

Women’s Hands Are All Over Brazil’s Booming Agribusiness

In Rondonópolis, in the interior of Mato Grosso state, in Brazil, a woman called ...

New York’s One-Million Crowd Celebrates Brazil

In 1984, near 46th Street, known as the street of the Brazilians in New ...