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Dana Air: Pursuit of the Public Good

Look in a courtroom and you will see that the trajectory of a case is not a straight line, but rather, one that bounces back and forth between the actions of the interested parties. It is not unlike a game of tennis, except that the ball of justice does not bounce back and forth but rather is angled inexorably toward justice (or injustice) rather than gravity.

Nowhere is this more true than in the Dana Air case. Some people question why the suspension of Dana Air’s operating license has been lifted. The airline has begun the re-certification process.

The court may well be in pursuit of justice; but the specifics of the accident and the disposition of the interests of the victims and the offended families should not be waylaid by a false move, a wrong move, a defensive move by interested (or disinterested parties.) This is not a chess match. A case with so many powerful parties involved may play deep in strategies, but we should never forget, it is not a game. The lawsuit is all too real—as real as the thoughtless and preventable annihilation of one hundred and fifty-nine souls. These people need not have died. But they did.

The court may well be in pursuit of justice; but the Dana Air case is more than an opportunity to escape through, manipulate, reveal or sew up loopholes. Laws exist for the purpose of establishing justice. We should not sit quietly as law is manipulated in the court or government’s own interest. The failure of law is a dam that blocks the flow of social progress. It is a double tragedy when the legal minds involved in a case pursue the escape route of loopholes in the name of self-interest rather than keeping the high purpose of seeking justice for the victims.

These truths are evident:

Dana Airline must operate professionally and within the highest safety parameters or it should not fly at all.

The victims and the families need full disclosure.

The growth and development of the workings of Nigerian investigation, legal proceedings, allocations of rights and responsibilities must continue, must improve, must be refined; but in the course of that development, the court must not ever lose sight of its responsibility to find justice for people who died simply because they bought airline tickets, or were in exactly the wrong place when a plane fell fro the sky.

I have not sat in the courtroom and heard every day the words of Captain Dele Ore. I do not know how valid is the coroner’s inquest. I only know that it is a judicial miscarriage for the court to permit the victim’s justice to be hijacked by mistakes in law, governmental evasion of responsibility, flawed forensics, loopholes, legal trickery or even those with a higher purpose of closing the loopholes for future cases. It can never be forgotten that lives were lost that should not have been. Irreparable damage has been done to individuals and families. The intent of the case is not to try the system (though indeed every case does try the system) but rather to find justice for the injured parties.

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    The Ides of Germanwings: One Year Later

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    Questions follow Dana Air


    After a crash, the stories always come out that put faces on the “seats.” The one that has, so far, struck me the most in the Dana Air crash is a tale of mixed blessings.

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    ler em Inglês
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    As famílias e os juízes logo enfrentarão uma escolha de Sofia.

    O assunto não seria um problema se:

    – os corpos estivessem localizados em um lugar de fácil acesso, de onde não fosse difícil recuperá-los;
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    – se os restos estivessem em melhores condições.

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    As famílias têm opiniões e necessidades distintas. Algumas se encontram transtornadas com o trauma dos resgates, porque os fatos recrudescem o sofrimento iniciado há apenas dois anos. Outras têm alguma esperança de que um funeral normal ajude a encerrar o episódio. Sem dúvida, há aquelas que têm sentimentos profundos, mas não conseguem decidir entre recuperar os corpos ou deixá-los no mar.

    Os testes de DNA devem ser feitos em laboratório, levam tempo, e significam que, para uma analise mais precisa, os restos precisam ser recuperados para identificação. E, depois de dois anos imersos em água salgada, sob a mesma pressão suportada pelas caixas pretas, os corpos, que já não se encontram em boas condições, ficarão ainda mais deteriorados com o resgate.

    Qualquer que seja a decisão, lembremo-nos de que a lei não é imutável, mas algo vivo. Esperemos, pelo bem das famílias, que aqueles que se sentem aptos a julgar as escolhas dos outros optem, neste caso, por favorecer os desejos de cada família, em vez de se tornarem um obstáculo.

    As famílias já sofreram o suficiente.

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