U.S. couple risk trial in France over stolen 18th-century shipwreck gold
Article content
Eleonor 'Gay' Courter and her 82-year-old husband, Philip, have been accused of helping to sell the bullion online for a French diver who stole it decades ago, but have denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.
Article content
Article content
Article content
Le Prince de Conty, a French ship trading with Asia, sank off the coast of Brittany during a stormy night in the winter of 1746.
Article content
Article content
Archaeologists in the 1980s discovered fine 18th-century Chinese porcelain, the remains of tea crates, and three Chinese gold bars in and around the shipwreck. But a violent storm in 1985 dispersed the ship's remains, ending official excavations.
Article content
Years later in 2018, the head of France's underwater archaeology department, Michel L'Hour, spotted a suspicious sale of five gold ingots on a U.S. auction house website. He told U.S. authorities he believed they hailed from the Prince de Conty, and they seized the treasure, returning it to France in 2022.
Article content
Investigators identified the seller as a certain Eleonor 'Gay' Courter, an author and film producer living in Florida.
Article content
Article content
Pesty had told the Antiques Roadshow television series in 1999 that she discovered the gold while diving off the west African island of Cape Verde. But investigators found this to be unlikely and instead focused on her brother-in-law, now 77-year-old underwater photographer Yves Gladu.
Article content
Article content
A 1983 trial had found five people guilty of embezzlement and receiving stolen goods over the plundering of the Prince de Conty. Gladu was not among them.
Article content
Held in custody in 2022, he confessed to having retrieved 16 gold bars from the ship during around 40 dives on the site between 1976 and 1999. He said he had sold them all in 2006 to a retired member of the military living in Switzerland. But he denied ever having given any to his American friends the Courters.
Article content
He had known the author and her husband since the 1980s, and they had joined him on holiday on his catamaran in Greece in 2011, in the Caribbean in 2014 and in French Polynesia in 2015, investigators found.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
French court to decide if Assad can be stripped of immunity and tried for Syrian chemical attacks
BRUSSELS — France's highest court is ruling Friday on whether it can strip the head of state immunity of Bashar Assad, the former leader of Syria now in exile in Russia, because of the brutality of the evidence in accusations against him collected by Syrian activists and European prosecutors. If the judges at the Cour de Cassation lift Assad's immunity, it could pave the way for his trial in absentia over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013 and Douma in 2018, and set a precedent to allow the prosecution of other government leaders linked to atrocities, human rights activists and lawyers say. Assad has retained no lawyers for these charges and has denied he was behind the chemical attacks. Ruling could open door for prosecutions in other countries A ruling against Assad would be 'a huge victory for the victims,' said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Center for Media which collected evidence of war crimes. 'It's not only about Syrians, this will open the door for the victims from any country and this will be the first time that a domestic investigative judge has the right to issue an arrest warrant for a president during his rule.' He said the ruling could enable his group to legally go after regime members, like launching a money laundering case against former Syrian Central Bank governor and Minister of Economy Adib Mayaleh, whose lawyers have argued he had immunity under international law. For over 50 years, Syria was ruled by Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar. During the Arab Spring, rebellion broke out against their tyrannical rule in 2011 across the country of 23 million, igniting a brutal 13-year civil war that killed more than half a million people, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Millions more fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. The Assad dynasty manipulated sectarian tensions to stay in power, a legacy driving renewed violence in Syria against minority groups despite promises that the country's new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all its communities. The ruling stripping Assad's immunity could set a 'significant precedent' that 'could really set the stage for potentially for other cases in national jurisdictions that strike down immunities,' said Mariana Pena, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, which helped bring the case to court. As the International Criminal Court has issued arrests warrants for leaders accused of atrocities — like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines — the French judges' ruling could empower the legal framework to prosecute not just deposed and exiled leaders but those currently in power. Assad allegedly bombed, tortured and gassed civilians The Syrian government denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, an accusation the opposition rejected as Assad's forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to possess sarin. The United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, but Washington settled for a deal with Moscow for Assad to give up his chemical weapons' stockpile. Assad survived more than a decade longer, aided militarily by Russia and Iranian-backed proxies. Activists and human rights group accuse him of using barrel bombs, torture, and massacres to crush opponents. But then in late 2024, a surprise assault by rebels swept into Aleppo and then Damascus, driving the dictator to flee for his ally Russia on Dec. 8, 2024. While Darwish and others plan to press Interpol and Russia to extradite him, they know it is unlikely. But an arrest warrant issued by France could lay the groundwork for the former dictator's trial in absentia or potential arrest if he travels outside Russia. Any trial of Assad, whether in absentia or if he leaves Russia, would mean this evidence could then 'be brought to light,' Pena said, including an enormous trove of classified and secret evidence amassed by the judges during their investigations. Syrians often took great personal risk to gather evidence of war crimes. Darwish said that in the aftermath of a chlorine gas attack in Douma, for example, teams collected eyewitness testimonies, images of devastation, and soil samples. Others then tracked down and interviewed defectors to build a 'chain of command' for the regime's chemical weapons production and use. 'We link it directly to the president himself, Bashar al-Assad,' he said. Head of state immunity is 'almost taboo' Assad was relatively safe under international law. Heads of state could not be prosecuted for actions taken during their rule, a rule designed long ago to ease dialogue when leaders needed to travel the world to meet, said Jeanne Sulzer, a French lawyer who co-led the case against Assad for the 2013 chemical attack. She said that kind of immunity is 'almost a taboo' regardless of the weight of the charges. 'You have to wait until the person is not a sitting in office to be able to prosecute,' she said. But that protection has been whittled away over the years by courts ruling that the brutality of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Charles Taylor in Liberia, and Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia, to name just a few, merited a restructuring of the world's legal foundations, said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. Ending impunity in Syria Syria today remains beholden to many awful legacies of the Assad dynasty. Poverty, sectarianism, destruction, and violence still haunt the Syrian Arab Republic. Damascus' new rulers are investigating nearly 300 people for crimes during several days of fighting on Syria's coast earlier this year. The interim authorities in Damascus have pledged to work with the United Nations on investigating further war crimes of the Assad regime and the civil war. The global chemical weapons watchdog has called on the new government of interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa to protect and dismantle Assad's stockpiles. Darwish is working on 29 cases against Assad and other regime figures who have fled to Russia, the Gulf, Lebanon and Europe. He said many Syrians hope Assad sits for a fair trial in Syria. 'It should be done in Damascus, but we need also a lot of guarantees that we will have a fair trial even for this suspect,' he said. His organization has already received requests to bring to court war crimes accusations against those involved in recent bloodshed in southern Syria. 'So anyone, whatever his name, or the regime, or their authority, we will keep fighting this type of crime,' Darwish said. Sam Mcneil, The Associated Press
Toronto Sun
5 days ago
- Toronto Sun
Interpol takes Canadian anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson off its most-wanted list
Published Jul 22, 2025 • 2 minute read Environmental activist Paul Watson smiles as he arrives at Charles de Gaulle's airport in Roissy, north of Paris, Dec. 20, 2025 after being released from prison few days ago. Photo by Thibault Camus / AP PARIS — Interpol said Tuesday it was removing a most-wanted designation for anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson, who is sought by Japan over an encounter with a whaling ship and who was jailed for several months last year in Greenland. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Watson, 74, is a former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose high seas confrontations with whaling vessels have drawn support from celebrities and featured in the reality television series 'Whale Wars.' Japan wants his extradition over an encounter with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2001, when he was accused of obstructing the crew's official duties by ordering the captain of his ship to throw explosives at the whaling ship. Starting in 2012, Watson had been subject to a 'red notice' of Interpol, the Lyon, France-based international police body. The Canadian-American activist was arrested and jailed on the Japanese warrant last year in Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, but released after five months. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Denmark does not have an extradition treaty with Japan, where Watson's foundation says he could have faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, and the Danish government declined to extradite him to Japan. At the time of his release, the Danish Justice Ministry said it had not received adequate guarantees from Japanese authorities that the time Watson had already served in custody would be counted against any sentence he would receive in Japan. In a statement, Interpol said the decision to remove Watson from the 'red notice' list did not reflect any judgment on the merits of the case in Japan, but that it did take into account Denmark's refusal to extradite him. 'This is not a judgement on the merits of the case, or the events that occurred in 2010,' the Interpol statement said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The police agency said the decision was made by an independent body, the Commission for the Control of Interpol's File, which is tasked to ensure that the police body's processing of personal data adheres to its internal rules. Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, hailed the 'good news that this notice was finally cancelled,' but she noted that Watson still could be arrested and sent to Japan for prosecution. 'It does not give Paul Watson his freedom of movements because the Japanese arrest warrant is sufficient for a country to order his arrest,″ she said. — Keaten reported from Geneva. Columnists Television Sunshine Girls Canada Celebrity
CTV News
17-07-2025
- CTV News
Two Toronto baggage handlers allegedly used unknowing passenger's luggage tag to transport 21 kilos of cannabis to France: RCMP
An RCMP epaulette is seen in Edmonton, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson Two Toronto baggage handlers who allegedly tried to smuggle $147,000 worth of cannabis to France using an unknowing passenger's luggage tags are facing charges, RCMP say. The RCMP Toronto Airport Detachment spearheaded the investigation, which started in May 2025 at Toronto Pearson International Airport after a French national arrived in Paris and was detained by local police on suspicion of trafficking. French authorities released the passenger following an initial investigation and referred the case to the RCMP, which determined that the passenger's luggage tags had been placed on a suitcase carrying 21 kilograms of cannabis without their knowledge. 'In this case, the baggage tag was switched so it looked as though the piece of luggage with the cannabis in it belonged to an unknowing traveller,' the RCMP said in a news release issued Thursday, describing the incident as a case of 'baggage tag switching.' Following the investigation, two longtime employees of the baggage handling company Swissport Canada Handling were arrested and charged on July 4. The suspects, identified by the RCMP as 51-year-old Woodbridge resident Dugal Hearne and 56-year-old Brampton resident Edward Wynter, were each charged with exporting cannabis, possession of cannabis for the purpose of export, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. The RCMP said Hearne had worked at Swissport for over 25 years, and Wynter for 21. Swissport was cooperative in the investigation, the RCMP said, adding that their support led to the 'timely apprehension' of the accused. 'The RCMP Toronto Airport Detachment members have been actively investigating cases involving baggage tag switching in attempts to smuggle illegal drugs and contraband out of Canada,' Insp. John McMath, of the RCMP Toronto Airport Detachment, said in a statement. 'I cannot impress enough upon the public the importance of staying vigilant during all aspects of travel.' Both suspects were released on undertakings and are scheduled to appear in a Brampton courtroom next month.
