Bernie Ecclestone and Jenson Button
Bernie Ecclestone has played down Jenson Button‘s brush with armed robbers at the Brazilian Grand Prix, suggesting that the British driver must have looked like a “victim”.
Six men with machine guns had tried to target his car as the 2009 champion tried to drive away from the Interlagos circuit after qualifying on Saturday.
His driver, trained in avoidance techniques, was able to take Button and his team away to safety.
That incident, however, coupled with stories of Sauber engineers being robbed, has cast the country in a negative light and Formula One supremo Ecclestone is keep to dispel the image.
“They [robbers] look for victims, they look for anyone that looks like a soft touch and not too bright,” he contended.
“The people that look a bit soft and simple, they will always have a go at. I think here for the race weekend they probably watch TV and see who’s not qualified in the top ten and think, ‘well they must be a bit stupid otherwise they would qualify in the top ten obviously’. So they are victims.”
The sport’s supremo subsequently inquired as to where Button had qualified, and when told it was eleventh, he replied: “There you are, you see, I have to rest my case.” (more…)
The air marshals were arrested in Brazil after they arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge aboard a Continental flight.
Two U.S. air marshals who arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge on a flight to Rio de Janeiro — and were themselves arrested and had their passports confiscated by Brazilian authorities — fled the country using alternate travel documents rather than face what they believed to be trumped-up charges, sources said.
The incident has impacted air marshal operations on flights to Brazil, officials said, and air marshals contacted by CNN said the case raises questions about Brazil’s willingness to support future law enforcement actions by U.S. officials on international flights.
The incident occurred on October 1 on Continental Flight 128 from Houston, Texas, to Rio de Janeiro. During the flight, a female passenger who appeared to be intoxicated tried to serve herself drinks by going to the plane’s galley, one source said. The plane’s crew asked air marshals to intervene, and two marshals approached the woman, who began struggling with them.
Two sources said the woman bit one of the air marshals, and she was handcuffed and placed under arrest.
At the Rio airport, the air marshals went to turn over the woman to local authorities but were themselves brought before a federal judge and charged with misdemeanor counts of assault, sources said. Brazilian authorities took the air marshals’ passports, so they could not leave the country and set a court hearing for the following week, sources said.
“They (Brazilian officials) did not want them to leave. They were not free to go,” one U.S. law enforcement source said.
But the air marshals used alternate travel documents and quietly departed the country on a commercial flight that same day without the knowledge of the Brazilian court officials who had sought their detention.
One source said the air marshals believed the charges against them were retaliatory because the passenger they arrested is the wife of a prominent Brazilian judge. The air marshals believed it was to their benefit to leave the country and let the U.S. and Brazilian governments resolve the dispute, the source said.
The air marshals had not recovered their passports when they left, the sources said. (more…)
