February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Larry Zaitschek, whose 6-year-old son Pearse is at the center of the battle pitting him and estranged wife, will not be in court because he fears arrest.
Zaitschek, a U.S. citizen, has faced potential extradition to Northern Ireland over his alleged role in the St. Patrick’s Day 2002 break-in at the Castlereagh police facility, where he had worked as a chef.
No papers have been served and the Bronx-born Zaitschek, who denies any role in the Castlereagh affair, doesn’t expect any. But his fear of arrest has heightened his growing sense of despair over his lack of visitation rights.
Zaitschek, who attracted the sobriquet of “Larry the Chef” following the Castlereagh affair, hasn’t spoken to his son in almost two years. And the last occasion was just a phone call.
In addition to divorce and a financial settlement, Zaitschek’s wife, Lisa Orderly, is seeking full custody of Pearse, a bar on any contact between father and son, and a continued life in Britain’s ‘Witness Protection Scheme.’
In an affidavit, Orderly has asked the Belfast court to “refuse” Zaitschek’s application for contact with Pearse, who will mark his seventh birthday Nov. 30.
Zaitschek, and his New York attorney Mary Elizebeth Bartholomew, are accusing the PSNI of stoking Orderly’s fears in order to “gain political advantage”
And they question any need for protection in the light of the recently improved security situation following IRA decommissioning.
“This is clear misuse of a child and the PSNI are at the center of it,” Zaitschek told the Echo.
Zaitschek charged that his wife’s affidavit to the court was “clearly written by the PSNI.”
Bartholomew said that a counter affidavit would be filed in the case as well as an application for intervention by Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan.
Zaitschek said he believed that his son was now in England with Orderly.
“The police should go and get her, not hide her,” his attorney said.
ONCE MORE WITH…
John O’Hara has lost in court again. But he is refusing to throw in the towel.
The Brooklyn native, who has been barred from voting in elections, previously failed in his bid to have the United States Supreme Court overturn the ban.
But he found a way back into the court system despite what most Americans would consider the last legal word.
He appealed for an entirely new hearing on the grounds that he had been “selectively prosecuted” in the first place.
O’Hara has waged a marathon battle against his 1999 conviction for voting fraud in his native Brooklyn.
He had voted from his girlfriend’s address and not his own home some distance away, during elections in 1992 and ’93.
O’Hara, who ran as a candidate himself, argued that this address, though not his permanent one, was not a false one.
As a result of his voting, O’Hara was prosecuted by the office of District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes and ended up a convicted felon.
He was sentenced to five years probation, fined $20,000, disbarred from his law practice and sentenced to perform 1,500 hours of community service.
His community service will end in a few weeks at which point he will no longer have to spend about eight hours each week collecting garbage in a Brooklyn park.
O’Hara’s effort to prove that he was unjustly prosecuted was spurred anew by a Harper’s Magazine report alleging that newly uncovered evidence in the case pointed to “selective” or “malicious” prosecution of O’Hara, who is the first American to be prosecuted and punished for voting fraud since Susan B. Anthony in 1876.
O’Hara believes that his case had set a precedent, one that potentially allows for frivolous or vindictive prosecution of other citizens, specifically for voting while not pledging to one address for a specific period of time.
Based on the Harper’s report, O’Hara filed for the new hearing with the New York court that originally tried his case. His bid for a hearing was successful.
But the same court recently denied his motion to overturn his conviction.
“It was a kick,” said O’Hara. “But I get to appeal.”
SWEENEY TELLS IT
Rep. John Sweeney has added his voice to the chorus of U.S. political approval for the IRA’s final act of decommissioning.
The upstate New York Republican said the move was an important step forward in the long overdue process to achieve a meaningful peace for Northern Ireland.
The decommissioning, said the congressional Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs co-chair, “allows the British and Irish governments to work with a potentially reinstated Northern Ireland Assembly to fully implement the Good Friday agreement.”
Meanwhile, New York, Governor George Pataki commended the disarming while stating that the only way to resolve the conflict was through Democratic action.
“It is imperative that all parties come together and fully implement the Good Friday agreement and work together to bring healing and peace,” Pataki said.
The New York Times, in an editorial, stated that the IRA’s move presented “a singular opportunity” but expressed concern over Protestant disenchantment, most especially on the part of supporters of the DUP’s Ian Paisley.
Paisley, the editorial stated, should step forward and demand an end to the “mayhem” by his community’s extremists.
“Neither side can afford to let this pivotal disarmament step die on the vine,” the editorial concluded.