“I’m a legal mind and sometimes an incredible jerk.”
PHILIPSBURG--Mirjam Mol is the new head of the St. Maarten Prosecutor’s Office since January 2018. Working in the Prosecutor’s Office suits her very well, she says, as she is socially-engaged and finds it important to do something beneficial to others. “On the other hand, I’m a legal mind and sometimes an incredible jerk, [traits – Ed.] I can use very well while working for this organisation,” she said.
Before taking up her job in St. Maarten, Mol worked for two years at the Attorney General’s Office in Curaçao as the Prosecutor’s Office’s Detective Coordinator (“Coördinerend Recherche Officier”) for Curaçao and St. Maarten and for Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, since December 2016.
She is the successor of Jeroen Steenbrink, who was appointed Interim Chief Prosecutor in St. Maarten in November 2017. Before coming to Curaçao she was employed by the Prosecutor’s Office in the Netherlands for 25 years.
She said she became interested in St. Maarten while working in Curaçao. In her former capacity she visited St. Maarten every month to discuss ongoing investigations and during these visits she became acquainted with the island and the Prosecutor’s Office here.
Big impression
What made a big impression on her is how people chose to go on with their lives here after Hurricane Irma, which caused so much destruction.
“I wanted to make a contribution as well. I wanted to be here and do my part. Therefore, when the position of Chief Prosecutor became available I thought, ‘why not?’” Mol applied for the job, was selected and came here.
However, she did not want the interview to be about herself, but about what the Prosecutor’s Office is doing and about its role in the St. Maarten community, in law enforcement and in investigations.
“I think we should explain this better,” she said, as she has noticed that there are certain assumptions about what the Prosecutor’s Office stands for which are not always correct.
“One of the questions we often hear is why cases are taking so long before they are handled in Court. We need to explain much more that we cannot go by what a person is saying or posting on the Internet, because not everything that appears on the Internet is the truth. That is what we need to investigate when we bring a case before a judge. We need to investigate the facts, what did actually happen.”
That often starts with somebody reporting an alleged crime and then it is up to the Prosecutor’s Office to verify the statement.
“It is not always easy to verify the truth of such a statement and the circumstances under which a crime happened, because that requires investigations into possible paper trails and the interrogation of persons involved by the police, asking them what they have seen and heard.
“They ask them how they have learned about this, and this cannot be that you have heard it from a neighbour, have overheard a conversation in the supermarket, or have read something on the Internet. No, that is not enough. We are looking for people who have experienced it themselves and can provide information from their own perception.
“It takes time to find these people, who also need to be willing to give information,” Mol says.
The Prosecutor’s Office can only bring a case to court if there is sufficient evidence, which also requires time, as do the court proceedings, which include the defence verifying witness statements, which in some cases may take months.
Dump projects
The investigation into the dump is one of those cases taking a long time before reaching the courts. The investigation into the situation at the landfill was announced in April 2018.
In a public statement issued four months later, prosecutors said they had received several complaints regarding illegal practices taking place at the dump, including arson. The environment and public health were affected by the pollution of water, soil and air. Furthermore, subversive activities allegedly were taking place within government, such as fraud and corruption, and the import of waste from abroad.
The broad-range and complex investigation would take quite some time and, therefore, the first suspects would not appear before a judge any time soon. “We are in for the long haul,” Steenbrink said at the time.
The dump project has many facets, Mol says. “There is not only a criminal investigation, because a criminal investigation will not solve the problems; let’s be honest about that. The dump is a social problem and not a recent problem either. It has accumulated over the years, also literally, as we have seen this thing grow higher and higher.”
What the Prosecutor’s Office has to investigate is how dangerous the dump really is, which is not only a matter of criminal law or, simply said, looking for culprits, people who can be held responsible and liable for the current situation at the dump.
“That is like pealing an onion, but in the meantime we should not sit still but consider what we should be doing about the dump. In the period that my predecessor was here the dump was on fire almost every day and we saw those incredibly dirty clouds of smoke over Philipsburg.
“The number of fires seems to have been reduced. I have the impression that they have not stopped because I think it is still smouldering, as there are still hot spots in the dump’s interior which have not been extinguished. This must be done because only after that you can start cleaning up. Therefore, the danger is certainly not over yet, but the urgency has reduced somewhat because the dump is no longer burning continuously.”
Due to the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office and others, such as law office BZSE, put the focus on the dump situation, wheels have been put into motion, Mol said.
“This has increased the sense of urgency to do something about the dump. We see that work is being done at the dump, albeit at a pace of which I say, ‘Come on boys, you could pay more attention to it,’ but everybody has the focus on it.”
This is partially due to the World Bank. Also, the Ministry of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure VROMI has taken over management at the dumpsite.
Mol is not certain whether those responsible for wrongdoings at the dump will ever appear in front of a judge, “but the question is whether we should consider this a failure, because most important is that there will be good waste management on the island in a safe way.
“Now, there are people living at the dump who are breathing the fumes emanating from the dump at a daily basis. We do not know how dangerous and bad this is for these people, which has not been established as yet. Ideally, you would have wanted to carry out a screening of the population to establish the health hazards caused by the smoke, but that is not a responsibility of the judicial authorities, but of the health officials in St. Maarten.”
She said it is the civic role of the Prosecutor’s Office to put a problem on the map and to keep talking about it, but others also need to start moving, “but the project is still in progress,” she added.
Mol understands that it is frustrating for those directly affected that short-term solutions are not possible. According to her, it is the Prosecutor’s Office’s responsibility in this case, as well as in the civil injunction filed against Country St. Maarten it has joined pertaining to the dump fires, to keep “pushing” and to urge government “to do what must be done.”
Harbour inquiry
Another long-running court procedure is the request for a civil inquiry into the state of affairs within the Port of St. Maarten. The Prosecutor’s Office had filed the request for an inquiry August 31, 2017. In an intermediate ruling of June 14, 2018, the Joint Court indicated there was sufficient reason to doubt the correctness of policies within St. Maarten Harbour Holding Company NV (SMHHC).
However, to date the Joint Court has not granted permission for the requested inquiry and has granted the port more time to provide more information.
Mol said she is feeling “frustration” about this case, because of the time granted to SMHHC to provide more information while at the same time judges have said there is mismanagement at the port.
However, SMHHC is claiming it has already taken certain measures to prevent mismanagement in the future and that an expensive inquiry is no longer needed.
“But if we look into history, that’s not what we’re seeing,” Mol says, “because the harbour has always said, ‘Let us do our job and everything will be okay,’ but that has led to the Prosecutor’s list pointing out where the harbour has gone wrong and committed mismanagement. So why would we trust them in saying that they will be doing everything according to the book from now on?”
Detention capacity
The deplorable state of the Pointe Blanche prison and the lack of detention capacity is very “worrisome” and “bad news for St. Maarten,” the Chief Prosecutor says. Due to the fact that currently only 70 persons can be detained, the Prosecutor’s Office only has limited capacity to take crime suspects into preliminary detention.
However, in certain cases, such as those involving extreme violence or firearms, suspects will “certainly” be taken into preventive custody, Mol assured.
She said it “hurts” that the Prosecutor’s Office under the current situation within the prison’s confines does not have any other choice but to let persons who would otherwise be detained await their trial in freedom.
The lack of detention capacity also means that the Prosecutor’s Office is looking into the possibility to send convicts home before their jail term has ended. “That is a decision that hurts. That is bad news for St. Maarten,” says Mol.
In these cases, the Minister of Justice makes a decision for early release, which entails a reduction of the sentence imposed by a judge, “which is not what the judge intended, and not the sentence someone deserves,” Mol explains.
This could mean that dangerous people end up on the street again, while they have not completed their sentences as yet.
The Chief Prosecutor says that in a recent verdict the owner, manager and supervisor of El Capitan and Le Petit Chateau brothels who were convicted on charges of human trafficking, exploitation of brothel workers, deprivation of liberty and illegal employment in the so-called “Pompeii” investigation were not sent to jail because of the lack of detention capacity.
In April, brothel owner Etienne “Tochi” Meyers was sentenced to payment of a NAf. 1 million fine and three years suspended on two years’ probation. El Capitan’s manager Dulcea Felomina Florentina was sentenced to two years suspended on three years’ probation and a NAf. 500,000 fine, whereas Le Petit Chateau’s supervisor Louella Marianella Rog received one year suspended, on three years’ probation and a NAf. 250,000 fine.
In the verdict, the judge said the crimes committed warranted a prison sentence, yet a fine was imposed because of the lack-of-capacity problems in the prison.
According to Mol, this was unnecessary, as it may take years before the verdicts in this case become irrevocable. By that time the capacity of the prison may very well have been have increased. She said the Prosecutor’s Office has appealed the verdicts because it disagrees with the fact that fines were imposed instead of prison terms.
She said this may be giving the wrong signal to society that in St. Maarten no prison sentences are meted out, which is not true, because Kathron Fortune was recently imprisoned for life for double murder and his co-perpetrator sentenced to 30 years.
Mol says it is not within her power to build a prison, but what she can do is inform the Minister of Justice about the consequences of the absence of an extension of the detention capacity. She said that ankle-bracelets are a possible alternative to detention that may be introduced in the near future.
Where the Prosecutor’s Office’s staff is concerned, Mol said she is intensively looking for St. Maarten residents to fill vacancies, including those for prosecutors.
