Pubdate: Mon, 27 Feb 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Peter Small, Courts Bureau 

DRUG SQUAD TRIAL: FORCED TO INTERPRET FOR POLICE, EX-STRIPPER
SAYS

A former stripper who says her English was too poor to complain about
Toronto drug squad officers beating and robbing her 14 years ago is
seen on a booking video interpreting the language for a friend.

Aida Fagundo, 48, alleges drug squad officers beat her arms, legs and
buttocks with a telephone book hours earlier at north Toronto's 53
Division after she was arrested for possessing cocaine for the purpose
of trafficking in 1997.

She also claims she heard her female co-accused, Maria Sanchez-Moreno,
crying out and begging officers to stop beating her in a nearby room.

But both women appear calm on the video - which would have been after
the alleged abuse - played on Monday at a police corruption trial by
defence lawyer John Rosen, as they are booked into 55 Division police
station and then taken separately to a cell, where they are each
searched by a matron.

And the video shows Fagundo making a few brief, somewhat rudimentary
translations of the booking sergeant's English words into Spanish for
Sanchez-Mareno.

"You can see in the video I almost can't understand anything," Fagundo
said, via video link from Spain, her remarks translated from the
Spanish by an interpreter in the Toronto courtroom where the trial is
being held.

Rosen pointed out that police brought her in to interpret for her
co-accused.

"I was forced to do it," Fagundo replied. "I translated what I
understood, but that doesn't mean the translation was accurate."

Fagundo has admitted to flying to Toronto from Montreal, where she was
then living, to oversee the transport of five one-kilogram bricks of
cocaine on Nov. 2, 1997, while two "drug mules" brought the product by
train. She pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine for he purposes of
trafficking two years later.

Fagundo claims that after Toronto drug squad officers arrested her and
the two "mules," including Sanchez-Moreno, in Scarborough on Nov. 2,
they not only beat her, but cut up her citizenship card, stole $10,000
from her purse and snatched her $20,000 diamond earrings. One of them
fondled her breasts, she said.

Steve Correia, 44; John Schertzer, 54; Ned Maodus, 48; Raymond
Pollard, 47; and Joseph Miched, 53 - former Toronto Central Field
Command drug squad officers - face various charges, including
attempting to obstruct justice, perjury, assault and extortion.

None of the officers is charged with assaulting or robbing Fagundo,
but with falsifying evidence related to her arrest as part of a
conspiracy to attempt to obstruct justice.

The trial continues. 
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