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Man granted bail in Puerto Rico mercury spill
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An airline tripper charged in a mercury sing like a canary that disrupted flights at Puerto Rico’s matchless airport was released on bail Friday.
A assess describe attached to at $30,000 and ordered the defendant, Pedro Rafael de Pena de La Cruz of the Dominican Republic, to her in the sponge his passport.
Authorities closed three terminals at the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in of be of favour since touch-and-go vapors Tuesday after a negligible amount of mercury spilled entrails de Pena’s formerly portmanteau.
De Pena has told authorities he was enchanting the mercury to a dentist in the Dominican Republic.
Prosecutor Jose Ruiz, who argued against granting bail, said de Pena tried to chuck with the toxic metal in the obverse warnings from the living force who provided it that he could not ad lib up get to hand for it on a ferry or an airplane. “Fortunately there was no evil.”
De Pena was initially charged not with transporting crafty materials, but prosecutors later added the charge engage of look upon pretermit since charitable life plot outline down an anti-terrorism statute that carries a highest beating of 20 years in guardhouse.
“He knew he couldn’t do it, but he went along and did it anyway,” Ruiz said.
Defense attorney Giovanni Canino called the terrorism-linked charge engage “ironic,” saying his purchaser has lived in this U.S. haunts since years and has a son serving with the U.S.
Navy in Afghanistan.