A woman in a muddled divorce case against a Nigerian senator was arrested and sent to psychiatric evaluation after she threatened the life of the Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge overseeing divorce proceedings.
Officials said that Cheryl Uzamere allegedly called the Inspector General’s office of New York County and threatened to “put on a disguise and shoot Judge Jeffrey Sunshine in the head” according to the New York Law Journal, which first broke the story.
Uzamere, who has detailed her litigation woes on her website http://www.thecrimesofsenatoruzamere.com is also accused of leaving 10 threatening voice mails and sending three frightening faxes to Judge Sunshine’s chambers, officials said.
“Once I penetrate the skin that lies between my fangs and your carotid, I do not let go,” she wrote at the bottom of one of the faxes. “This battle is to the death.”
Uzamere surrendered to authorities on Nov. 3.
On her website, she accuses Judge Sunshine of “adjourning divorce action nine times for no-show defendant; denied child support; accepted fraudulent, unauthenticated foreign counter-affidavits and rendering falsified decisions in favor of no-show defendant and no-show defendant’s immigration attorneys.”
There are five other judges listed with Sunshine on the “Hall of Shame” section of Uzamere’s website. All of her comments stem from her bitter divorce and custody battle with Nigerian Senator Ehigie Edobor Uzamere, who reportedly didn’t come back to the U.S. to attend any of the court proceedings.
A 31-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in jail last week after pleading guilty to forcing a young woman into prostitution both in Mexico and the United States.
During his appearance in Brooklyn Federal Court, Jose Luis Guzman Sanchez admitted to raping a 17-year-old girl and then forcing her into prostitution in the two countries over the course of four years. He reportedly smuggled the young woman into the United States halfway through those four years of hell so she could earn him more money as a prostitute, federal prosecutors said.
The young woman, who was forced to turn tricks in Queens, Manhattan, Newark, Baltimore and Washington D.C., was not permitted to keep any of the money she earned. Nor was she able to send it to her family in Mexico, officials said.
Instead, it all went to Guzman, who would allegedly beat the young woman if he believed that she was hiding money from him or when she refused to work, explained prosecutors and members of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Five Muslim immigrants detained in Brooklyn following the 9/11 terrorist attacks have agreed to separate themselves from an ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. challenging the constitutionality of their incarceration, settling instead for a $1.2 million payout.
Two of the plaintiffs, 37-year-old Yasser Ebrahim, the owner of a borough web site design business before he and his young brother Hany were apprehended, told the New York Times that they had agreed to settle because their case against the United States had been bogged down by seven years of motions, cross-appeals and delays.
The suit claims that the plaintiffs as well as dozens more Middle Eastern residents were taken into custody in the days following September 11 without probable cause and held as “persons of interest.”
The plaintiffs were all secured in the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal maximum security detention facility in Sunset Park, where they were “physically abused from the moment they arrived,” the lawsuit states.
Prisoners were shackled, slammed face first into a wall where an American flag T-shirt was hung and were routinely abused by guards, they alleged.
News of the mistreatment sparked several protests outside the Detention Center, many of which were covered by this paper.
In the end several Center guards were disciplined. A few, including a captain, were convicted for assaulting the inmates, according to the Times.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department wouldn’t comment on the settlement.
Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the detainees, said the settlement would deter the United States from rounding up “innocent noncitizens” again.
Meeropol’s suit against the U.S. government continues with seven plaintiffs remaining.
