WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-09 Time: 16:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Sanchia Temkin
Johannesburg – GREG Nott was shattered when he first heard about the plight of athlete Caster Semenya, more than a year ago.
After her victory at last year’s World Championships in Berlin, questions were raised about whether Semenya had an intersex condition that might give her an unfair advantage over other female athletes.
The news broke on a Sunday morning in August last year. Nott had just returned from a walk and found his distraught nine-year-old son. He had seen the headlines of the Sunday papers and watched the news on TV, and turned to his father and said: “This is bad, dad; you have to do something.”
Nott contacted Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile and said Dewey & LeBoeuf, the international law firm for which Nott manages the South African office, would take the case pro bono. Nott is a keen marathon runner and avid sports fan, but it was the human rights element of the case he felt compelled to address. “In this case, I had a very deep sense this was a young girl who, frankly, was being ostracised and singled out unfairly – and, moreover, very publicly. For whatever reason, it struck a deep chord and I thought let’s match power with power; I decided to volunteer our services as we are a large and powerful firm.
“Given our expertise in sports law internationally and locally, it was appropriate to muster our resources and make them available to a South African girl from a rural background who obviously had the strength of character to participate in world athletics and ability but who lacked access to global legal expertise,” Nott says.
Dewey & LeBoeuf is headquartered in New York with offices in 15 countries on four continents and is known primarily for its commercial, litigation, tax and restructuring practices, but also for its a strong commitment to pro bono work and human rights cases.
The firm was unable to proceed with Semenya’s case immediately as the South African practice didn’t have permission to proceed. “All cases must be run through a conflicts department, which is a due diligence process. We also have to justify why such a matter should be done on a pro bono basis as they can run into a significant amount of money.”
Nott was subsequently given the green light by chairman Steven Lewis. Because the case had far-reaching legal ramifications internationally, Semenya’s legal team was made up of lawyers in SA, Milan and New York.
“There were incredibly anxious moments because the matter was intertwined with law and politics, both internationally and locally.
“This did not frighten me or deter me; the consequences of not getting it right on behalf of Caster were obviously always the concern,” says Nott. The case “drew his attention” every day for 11 months.
“In terms of process we could have gone a number of ways; that of open hostility to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) or one whereby Caster’s participation could see the light of day. It was after a particular morning session that I decided to request the South African government to appoint a mediator who could facilitate meetings between ourselves and the IAAF. These meetings were held in Paris, Istanbul and Monaco. All done to ensure the dialogue was continuous so progress could be made.”
Nott was always confident the legal team would prevail “because of who Semenya was, as a woman, athlete and as a person. She has an incredible force, focus, dedication and commitment to compete and be the person she is. For me, to have fallen short on any of those qualities in my representation of her would have been completely and utterly unhelpful. And we were fortunate in the representative we met from the IAAF, who is a person of integrity and empathy.”
The Christmas period was “particularly excruciating” as there were wild stories circulating as to what Semenya’s legal team was going to do.
“It was an unwelcome pressure over a period by which I had hoped to have wrapped up the matter. We lost some ground over January which we had to regain.”
Semenya’s gold medal and race times have been formally recognised by the IAAF and she has received an undisclosed financial settlement for her ordeal. However, her medical records have still not been disclosed and it is still unclear as to whether she has internal testes, which may pose a future health risk, particularly pertaining to cancer: “Why should they be out there?” asks Nott. “Would anyone like their sex records to be made public?” Nor can it be disclosed whether Semenya underwent any medical procedures or any hormone suppressing treatment in the time she was laid off. That remains privileged information between Semenya, the medical team and her legal team, and Nott will not be drawn on any long-term health prognoses.
“With Caster winning now, I just feel elated, fantastic – over the moon.”
Semenya’s case is just one of a string of human rights matters for Nott, who also successfully represented South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius pro bono in his matter to get the IAAF to reverse its decision to exclude him from participating in able-bodied events. Nott took up Pistorius’s challenge and overturned the IAAF ruling in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Nott was awarded the prestigious lawyer of the year award this year by Legal Business in London for his pro bono activities.
“An award of this nature is personally significant because it shows my peers value principles in law which are intimately linked to society.
“This award, made by international judges recognising a South African, was particularly meaningful,” he says.
His commitment to human rights goes back many years.
As a young lawyer he was attracted to media law and in particular the rights of journalists and the freedom of the press.
In the 1980s he was hired by Bell Dewar & Hall (now Bell Dewar) and it was there he developed a “passion” for public interest law. “At that stage journalists were being detained or forced under then section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act to divulge their sources. The sense of justice and injustice by those who carried ostensible authority was something I have always railed against.”
He helped secure the release of a number of political detainees held by the apartheid-era minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok. “My sense of justice took shape during those years. Learning to deal with the security police was an acquired skill,” Nott says drolly.
In the 1990s he represented the David Webster Trust in the inquest on the assassination of David Webster by the Civil Co- operation Bureau. After the abolition of apartheid in 1994, he led a legal team, with Brian Currin, founder of Lawyers for Human Rights, in the first amnesty hearing before the amnesty committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In addition to his human rights work, Nott also has a wide commercial practice specialising in telecommunications and energy. He recently acted for US-based Telcordia in its 10-year dispute with Telkom. The company initiated proceedings in 2001 when Telkom cancelled a contract with it to supply, install and integrate a customer care management system.
“It was ironic that before the World Cup final the perfect storm was taking shape in the office as we had to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in two significant matters; one profoundly human, being that of Caster Semenya, and one hugely commercial,” says Nott. “The team of lawyers that were gathered over the 10-year period in the Telcordia matter were almost too many too count.”
Law, says Nott, is not always the ease and grace of a quick quip in court or a smart scratch of a pen: “It’s really about a long, hard slog, being tenacious and keeping your wicket.”
Original Source: 
Original date published: 9 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009090794.html?viewall=1