The visa oncologist Cyril Karabus was issued by United Arab Emirates authorities was incorrectly dated and must be changed.
|||Cape Town - There is yet another last minute scramble before Cape Town oncologist Professor Cyril Karabus can board a plane home – the visa he was issued by United Arab Emirates authorities was incorrectly dated and must be changed.
But Karabus’s Cape Town lawyer, Michael Bagraim, this morning said efforts to get Karabus on a flight directly to Cape Town tomorrow morning were still on track.
The UAE prison authorities yesterday finally returned Karabus’s passport to him after making him wait for about two weeks following his final acquittal on charges relating to the death of a child patient of his in 2002.
Karabus, 78, was arrested in the UAE last year while in transit home to Cape Town from a visit to Canada. He had been sentenced in absentia in the UAE shortly after the child had died and was listed on the UAE’s wanted list at the time.
Apart from being acquitted in March and then winning an appeal which followed, Karabus also had to wait for his name to be cleared from the UAE’s records.
The incorrect dates on the visa was the latest in a string of bungles by administrators in the UAE.
“I am convinced that the South African chargé d’affaires there, Fanus Venter, will be able to get this sorted out,” Bagraim said.
“Yesterday, after Professor Karabus had a fight with them, Emirates Airlines agreed to reinstate the ticket he had from there to Cape Town but could not use at the time of his arrest. There is a seat for him on a flight tomorrow morning, which will have him back in Cape Town by tomorrow afternoon.
“Luckily, when Fanus (Venter) went to pre-arrange the departure for the professor this morning, he discovered the dates on the visa were wrong. It could have caused some official at the airport tomorrow to prevent Professor Karabus from flying, because the dates did not cover a part of the time he was in the UAE under arrest.
“Fanus Venter was a real star for us over there. He did so much and it is not as if this was the only work he had to do. If it wasn’t for him running around and getting things done, I doubt whether Professor Karabus would have been able to do it,” Bagraim said.
Bagraim said he hoped the visa dates would be sorted out today, as government offices in the UAE closed at 2pm from Thursdays to Sundays.
Karabus’s son, Michael, said yesterday that the news of his father’s pending return had not sunk in yet.
“It’s still surreal. It’s been nine months of fighting… I’m still getting used to the idea,” he said.
henri.duplessis@inl.co.za
Cape Argus