Judge asked to exit case, source says (Florida)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Wed, Mar. 31, 2004


FEDERAL COURT

Judge asked to exit case, source says

A motion has been filed in immigration court seeking the recusal of a judge on grounds he becomes confused and is not `fully competent.'

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
[email protected]


Veteran federal immigration Judge Neale Foster has been asked to remove himself from a sensitive asylum case involving two Venezuelan military officers because he may not be ''fully competent'' to preside over the case, according to a person close to the case.

A motion filed by Leopoldo Ochoa, attorney for Venezuelan National Guard Lts. Germán Rodolfo Varela and José Antonio Colina, says Foster, 79, should recuse himself from further proceedings, the source said.

Ochoa said that he believes the judge becomes easily confused and that at a March 18 hearing, when asylum proceedings began, he made comments irrelevant to the case, according to the source.
(snip)

Venezuelan officials have demanded the lieutenants' extradition on charges they bombed the Spanish embassy and the Colombian consulate in Caracas last year. The officers' families say the allegations are part of a frame-up to discredit the opposition to President Hugo Chávez.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/8316180.htm

[salin]

1. Need more information

sounds like a set-up (but that is my growing cynicism that expects such from this administration) - but it could be, given the judge's age, legit. Need more info to be able to make sense of it.