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Steven Donziger, the American indigenous rights activist and lawyer who has spent decades fighting energy company Chevron over pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest, was sentenced to six months in prison on Friday for contempt of court. part of a lawsuit brought by the oil giant.
Donziger, who was banned from practicing law in New York City last year, was convicted in May of defying court orders, including failing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices.
Friday’s conviction, handed down by federal judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan, came a day after he asked the court to review the opinion of independent United Nations experts who found his home isolation ordered by the tribunal for more than two years was a violation of international human rights. law.
The UN expert opinion said the United States broke international law by placing Donziger under house arrest for about four times the maximum six-month sentence he has now received in his contempt case.
The experts, appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, said “the appropriate remedy” would be “to grant [Donziger] an enforceable right to compensation ”.
Amnesty International also called on the US authorities “to quickly implement the decision of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calling for the immediate release of Steven Donziger”.
While Preska was not required to heed the testimony of UN experts that Donziger had been illegally locked up, she imposed a surprisingly harsh sentence. “It looks like only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will give her any respect for the law,” she said from the bench.
Donziger was charged in August 2019 with criminal contempt and taken into house arrest to address concerns about the risk of absconding. Five months ago, the judge found him guilty of “repeatedly and willfully” defying court orders.
The criminal case builds on a ruling in an earlier civil case in 2014, in which a Manhattan judge barred the United States from enforcing a $ 9.5 billion judgment against Chevron Corp that Donziger had won in Ecuadorian courts in 2011.
Chevron never paid, citing “shocking levels of misconduct” and fraud on the part of Donziger and the Ecuadorian justice system. In the United States, a judge agreed and said the Ecuadorian decision was obtained through bribery, fraud and extortion.
Donziger was ordered to turn over his computer, phones and other electronic devices. It then escalated into a criminal case when he didn’t.
In an interview with the Guardian in March, Donziger described how his crusade against Chevron on behalf of indigenous people affected by oil pollution in the Amazon rainforest turned into a victim of “corporate planned targeting. to destroy my life ”.
Friday’s decision is likely to raise condemnation of Donziger’s treatment by US authorities. In March, he claimed he was being tried “by a Chevron-related judge and sued by a Chevron-related lawyer?” This is simply not true, ”Donziger said.
“This is all part of a plan concocted by Chevron to dismantle my life. They want to do this to avoid paying and to make me a weapon of intimidation against the entire legal profession.
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