A US court denied for the second time the release on bail of the Serbian David Knezevich, the husband of Ana María Henao, the Colombian-American who has been missing since last February in Spain, according to the file.
According to the criteria of
Knezevich, 36, who has been in custody in Miami since May, has pleaded not guilty to the kidnapping charges he faces in the US courts.
Judge Edwin Torres rejected the request of the Serbian defense, considering that he represents a flight risk.
“The evidence presented … supports the court’s original conclusion that defendant presents a serious flight risk given the clever level of deception he has demonstrated as part of the crime in which he is alleged to have participated,” the judge wrote.
The judge, who had already denied another request for bail last June arguing “the nature and circumstances of the crime,” noted in this week’s ruling that The facts presented are sufficient for purposes of detention, and that the Government “could satisfy its burden of proving that the defendant participated in the kidnapping of his ex-wife”.
The young man’s lawyer, Kenneth Padowitz, has pointed out that his client has never set foot in Spain and that he has nothing to do with the disappearance of his wife, from whom he was separated.
What is the status of the case?
The court also scheduled for this Wednesday a new hearing to deal with another motion that is not detailed in the file.
The trial in Miami is scheduled to begin on October 21 and is expected to last two weeks.
Knezevich was arrested upon arriving from Serbia, where he is originally from, for his possible involvement in the disappearance of Ana Maria, 40.
The woman, of Colombian origin and American nationality – based in Fort Lauderdale – arrived in Madrid last December in the middle of divorce proceedings.
The last news that her relatives had about her was that I was looking for a new rental apartment with the expectation of staying in the Spanish capital for the long term.
Ana Maria disappeared shortly after a man wearing a motorcycle helmet disabled the security cameras at the apartment building in Madrid where she was staying and sprayed the camera lenses with aerosol.
The next day, two of Ana Maria’s friends received separate text messages, one in English and one in Spanish, from her phone saying she was planning to go away for a few days with a man she had just met, which aroused their suspicions.
That man was later identified as Knezevich.
FBI investigators believe the man who sprayed the cameras and sent the messages in English and Spanish is Knezevich.
The couple ran an information technology company in South Florida and was also involved in real estate. But they were involved in a complex divorce because they could not agree on the division of the estate. While she believed they should split it equally, he wanted Henao to get a smaller percentage. Specifically, he asked for 75 percent of the estate for himself.
At the end of August, it was learned that investigators were searching for Hainaut in the northern Italian province of Vicenza. The search was concentrated in the area surrounding the small municipality of Cogollo del Cengio, especially on an old road that leads to a mountain area, according to municipal sources who confirmed it to Efe. The Spanish and Italian National Police, FBI agents and other local bodies are collaborating in the operation.
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