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-Issue Number 200
 Thursday, December 1, 2005
Page 6
Welcome to the on line edition of the popular Tenerife free newspaper The Tenerife Sun. Click on the page pictures on the left hand side or the grid below to navigate around the articles. Or: Click Here to Search for a particular topic.

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BOOZE CRUISE BRIT FACES MURDER RAP
EXCLUSIVE by ANDY LINES
in Essex

A FATHER of two is being extradited to Tenerife today, Thursday, to face charges for a crime nine years ago he insists he did not commit.
Darren Sapstead will spend Christmas and up to 18 months inside a Spanish jail before his case even comes to court. He is the second Brit to be extradited to Spain on dubious charges inside six weeks after Aylesbury care-worker Terry Daniels was locked in a Madrid jail in October, for a sentence she was told she had escaped. As The Tenerife Sun went to press, Darren Sapstead was flying to Madrid expecting a move to Tenerife Penitentiary 2 in La Laguna. Several eye-witnesses have given
statements to the police insisting Darren Sapstead was completely innocent of any involvement in the
death of Irish tourist who drowned while on a booze cruise from Las Americas.
In fact they say Mr Sapstead was a hero – the only person on the boat who tried to save Garry Walton back in November, 1996. Before flying out to face his fate Mr Sapstead, 30, told The Tenerife Sun: “I just cannot believe this is happening to me. My life has been completely ruined. “I am completely innocent but I have been told I will not be allowed bail and might have to spend 18 months inside a Spanish prison before my case comes to court. It’s devastating to me and my family.” Darren and his wife, Joanne, 34, have yet to break the news to their children, Nicole, eight, and Nathan, three, that their daddy will be in a foreign jail for Christmas. Police arrived at the door of Mr Sapstead’s semi-detached house last January to tell him he was wanted in Tenerife for the murder of Mr Walton eight years before. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was being arrested because one witness had changed her story.
“There are several eye-witnesses who say it was not me and even the sister of this woman who identified me has said it wasn’t me.” Mr Sapstead, from South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, was charged and taken to Bow Street Magistrates Court where he was immediately granted bail. He insists he had nothing to do with Mr Walton going overboard on the £30-a-head booze cruise on a boat called Batros but heard somebody shout there was a man overboard. He started to take his clothes off to dive in and help him in the rough seas but other booze-cruisers stopped him so he threw a life ring towards him. He said he was happy to go to trial so that justice could be done but
added: “It is totally unfair that I have to spend over a year inside prison before trial.” Mr Sapstead’s lawyer, Stephen
Gentle, said: “The extradition process has been unimaginably distressing for Mr Sapstead and his family.
“The evidence against him is flimsy. However, extradition within Europe is not based on evidential considerations but rather on mutual trust of each other’s legal systems.” Mr Sapstead was due to fly out from Gatwick airport today.
He said: “I’ve only been told that I will be taken to a Madrid jail and later to Tenerife. I want to sort this thing out, but I don’t want my kids to see me in jail. “I don’t understand why I can’t have bail while I’m in Tenerife.” info@thetenerifesun.com

Blind man mugged again
GUARDIA Civil officers are searching for a callous thief who violently attacked a disabled man in Puerto de Santiago and robbed him.
The vicious thief attacked the Once lottery ticket salesman around 7am on Tuesday, November 22. The 54-year-old victim, who sells lottery tickets for the national Spanish blind organisation, contacted police after he was attacked in The elevator where he lives in Calle Los Angeles.
It was the second attack suffered by the partially sighted salesman. He was attacked, robbed and thrown down steps in the La Vigilia area in August. This time his attacker knocked him to the ground before making off with a
wallet containing four days takings – €2,384 in cash and more than €300 worth of lottery tickets.
The man received hospital treatment for slight injuries to his shoulder. Once lottery salespeople are blind or partially sighted and it is one of the aims of the organisation to provide jobs for them.
Booze-cruise Brit
faces murder rap

Mother’s plea to king for Terry’s release
THE mother of jailed Terry Daniels has written to King Juan Carlos of Spain in a bid to free her desperate daughter. She flew home from visiting her daughter in a Spanish prison on November 20, describing her as “pale, gaunt and depressed”. Pat Daniels wept as she revealed the 32-year-old was “mentally broken” and “at her lowest ebb.” And Terry’s plight, reported by The Tenerife Sun four weeks ago, has driven her mother to pen her
plea to the Spanish monarchy. She said: “I have just sent my letter to King Juan Carlos of Spain and posted two to British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, but have had nothing from either yet.” And she revealed Terry had still not seen a lawyer, six weeks after she was locked up in prison conditions that Pat described as “totally disgusting”.
Pat was forced to re-arrange her first visit to see daughter Terry after Spanish prison authorities moved her to a maximum security set-up in Salamanca. Terry Daniels, from Aylesbury, Bucks, was flown to Madrid to begin a decade-long sentence seven years after she was given a letter pardoning her before she stood trial. But while she was in Britain, court proceedings went ahead in her absence and found her guilty of drugs offences by association in 1998. She is now beginning a lengthy sentence in jail after being extradited by Britain. And Pat Daniels also revealed
this week that the family has still not seen anything to prove Terry was convicted. Pat said: “We have never seen anything in writing that says she has been given 10 years.” Terry, who has lost her father to cancer and suffered a brain haemorrhage since her ordeal began, was arrested after she flew from Brazil to Gran Canaria with her friend, Antonio Benavides, when customs officers opened his cases and found cocaine worth £1m.

NEW TOURISM TREND
Arrivals from the UK dropped by nearly nine per cent in October compared with the same month last year. It was a major factor in the island-wide tourism decline of 2.29 per cent on last October. Figures for the first 10 months of the year show a 3.45 per cent dip in British tourism.
But their places are increasingly being filled by mainland Spaniards, Scandinavian, Irish and former eastern bloc tourists. Their arrivals brought the overall figure for the year so far to four and a quarter million visitors, an increase of 1.4 per cent over the same period last year.
It was enough to give some heart to Tenerife’s tourism councillor, Jose Manuel Bermudez, who said: “The forecasts for the whole year lead us to be moderately optimistic since it seems we will end the year showing a slight increase on last year’s numbers.”
A breakdown of the year to date shows an increase in the Spanish market of 6.49 per cent. The German market remains steady while Scandinavian visitors rose by 10.76 per cent and the Irish market, a staggering 17.4 per cent, while the island receives visitors from the former eastern bloc in rapidly increasing numbers. In the first 10 months of this year the hotel business grew by just over three per cent, with 5-star hotels coming out on top with an increase of
5.7 per cent. Self-catering accommodation, long popular with Britons, has fared less well, suffering a decline of 1.26 per cent.
 
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