PHILIPSBURG – Following media reports about suspended MP Theo Heyliger legal troubles the United States cancelled his ESTA (electronic system for travel authorization. This made it impossible for Heyliger to travel directly to the US for medical treatment.
Anti Corruption Task Force (TBO) teamleader Jeroen Kuipers shed some light on the reported trouble Heyliger had to get his passport back from the prosecutor’s office.
“The first request we received was permission to travel to Boston for medical treatment for a period of four weeks. We thought that was a bit long and we asked for an explanation. We did not get it,” Kuipers says. “Then the United States cancelled his ESTA.”
This cancellation made returning the passport for traveling to the United States obviously pointless.
The second request the TBO received – via Heyliger’s attorney Eldon Sulvaran – was permission to travel to Curacao. There, Heyliger would go to the American consulate to apply for a visa via the regular application procedure.
“We do not stand in the way of anybody’s medical treatment,” Kuipers emphasized. “We honored the request for traveling to Curacao and returned the passport on the day the request was made.”
Heyliger is not out of the woods yet – and certainly not yet in Boston. One of the questions he will have to answer truthfully during his visa application interview at the American consulate is whether he has ever been in trouble with justice. A truthful answer is the only option – since the Americans already know the answer. It remains to be seen how this will influence the decision about his visa-application.
“I have no idea how long a visa application takes,” Kuipers says, adding that Heyliger will have to relinquish his passport again upon his return to St. Maarten.
In case the Americans refuse the visa, Heyliger will have to consider other options for medical treatment in – for instance – Colombia or the Netherlands.
UPDATE 1:
According to sources close to the family, Theo Heyliger has been granted a travel visa valid for one year with certain restrictions by the US Consul in Willemstad, Curacao, today. However, a new obstruction has come to light.
UPDATE 2:
Theo’s passport reported as ‘stolen’ to Interpol while in custody of Prosecutor’s Office
SINT MAARTEN/CURACAO – It appears that every avenue suspended Member of Parliament Theo Heyliger is attempting to get to the United States for treatment for his stage one kidney cancer is thwarted by elements of the Dutch colonial authorities.
Heyliger and his wife Grisha Heyliger-Marten flew to Curacao on Tuesday night to attend an interview at the United States Consulate in an attempt to get a medical visa. Heyliger has to get a visa because his ESTA was cancelled after the Prosecutor’s Office confiscated his passport when he was in pretrial detention in February.
The medical visa has been granted to Heyliger by US authorities. Unfortunately, a new hurdle has appeared after it was found that his passport is listed in the International Police Organisation Interpol database as “stolen.”
The Prosecutor’s Office had Heyliger’s passport from February 19 to June 17 and his diplomatic passport was surrendered in late May when the verdict was issued for his release on the condition that he surrenders his passport/s.
Only received was Heyliger’s regular passport which was returned to him on Monday. The passport return followed a strong push by Heyliger-Marten to get the passport released. She made it public she was prepared to turn up at the Prosecutor’s Office every hour on the hour to demand the release of her husband’s passport.
Heyliger has to now apply for a new passport, a process that could take up to four weeks. A very irate and frustrated Heyliger-Marten says there is no guarantee this path is also not booby trapped to further stifle her husband’s effort to get medical treatment. When and if a new Dutch passport is received, it has to be sent by FedEx back to Curacao for the visa to be affixed. Only after that process is fulfilled can Heyliger even attempt to see a specialist in Boston.
She says with each passing day for her fear of losing her husband to the cancer growing inside of him looms larger. “This is my husband. The father of my children. He is a human being. He has harmed no one and has only given his all to the community. This is torture for him, for me, for our family.”
She questioned who, if not the Prosecutor’s Office and the prosecutor on the case had reported the passport as stolen. “This is pure wickedness and evil. They only know what they have put together to destroy my husband. They don’t think of him as a person, just as a career maker for them. They have proved they will do every and anything even destroy him from his insides to get a feather in their cap. Now that is corrupt!”
“It’s extremely hard for me to believe that the Dutch has nothing to do with Theo’s ESTA being revoked. And now crazy and outrageous is it that he could travel on this so-called stolen passport from St. Maarten to Curacao and back. This is even weirder than a bad scientific fiction story,” Heyliger-Marten says.
“I also want to directly tell the Prosecutor’s Office that I don’t care how much it denies it, that I, Grisha Heyliger-Marten, believed it’s all the Prosecutor’s Office’s doing. He wanted to make sure Theo don’t run away so he took it to this extreme. Why would he runaway? Unlike the prosecutors who come here and live off the people of this country, this is Theo’s home,” said Heyliger-Marten.
He has given much of his life to this island and now he is fighting for his health because of pure maliciousness. The vindictiveness of the Prosecutor’s Office must stop. It’s goal should not be to continue to try and kill my husband slowly and painfully,” says Heyliger-Marten.
