Why does the Crown Court threaten 60 months in prison to an illiterate African born TV Repairman? Because it cannot prove its case and needs to "plea it out". Here is the fourth blog in the E-Waste Witch Hunt Series, featuring men old enough to remember Ghana as a British Colony, getting their "facts" from Michael Anane, Jim Puckett, and TinTin Comics. Posting publicly the prosecution's case and sentencing remarks against #FREEHURRICANEBENSON...
His Honor Judge Dawson's Sentencing Remarks
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| Judge Dawson and LCS Get Facts from Tin Tin |
"Basically, the situation seems to be, if I can put it into, again, rather layman's language, that waste electrical goods can be exported to other countries quite sensibly and be used by other countries who perhaps cannot afford such things themselves, poorer countries in the main I imagine, but the rules and regulations to protect the environment say that that waste material must be converted back into items which have been properly tested and which therefore can be safely exported as properly tested secondhand items.
"In essence, what happened here is that when the environment agency intercepted these containers they looked inside them and they found that a large proportion of the items were hazardous waste, were not tested or suitable for use abroad, and in reality what would have happened -- the percentage is about 50 per cent -- in reality what would have happened is that large containers would have arrived in these African countries and 50 per cent of the items inside would have been hazardous waste. What happens, I am told, is that although there are rules and regulations all over the world for the treatment of hazardous waste, the reality is that in countries such as these the hazardous waste is not properly policed and therefore creates a danger, an environmental danger, not only to the residents and citizens of that country but I suppose to the world because these hazardous materials can create a problem of pollution worldwide."
The bold italics I added to link to NGOs Basel Action Network, who made this claim in "
A Place Called Away"... after describing the Metal Scrappers in Agbogbloshie as "children" and depicting them with ghoulish, halloween language, Puckett gives the story about Benson's containers.
"This material [at the Agbogbloshie scrapyard] made its arrival on African shores just some days earlier as cargo inside 40-foot
intermodal corrugated containers — the shifting bricks of globalized trade turned techno-trash
haulers. Around 400 of these, each containing about 600 computers or monitors arrive each month
at the Port of Tema, Ghana, from the UK, USA, Canada and countless other rich and developed
countries. They may find a quick stay on the floors and shelves of hundreds of second-hand
markets throughout Accra. But those that do not sell — about half, even if they work perfectly —
are then picked up by small boys pushing heavy carts and hauled several miles to the outskirts of
town, to be thrown away — to Agbogbloshie’s scavengers."
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| "small boys" according to Jim Puckett |
For film of the "Small Boys", see the Alex Wondergem / Adu Lalouschek documentary titled "
Scrap Metal Men". These are not small boys, Abogbloshie is definitely not on the "outskirts of town", and the display devices "working or not" are not thrown away. But despite 3 preposterous, self evidently false claims in the paragraph, Judge Dawson appears to give the claim more weight than Benson's.
