Bird faces sex charges

Bird

ANTIGUA:

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua (AP):

A TEENAGE girl, who gave a videotaped interview accusing Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird of having sex with her, has filed a lawsuit charging the island's leader with statutory rape, abduction, conspiracy and sexual assault.

Bird, who was cleared last week by a government-ordered investigation on the basis of lack of evidence, is being sued along with his younger brother, Ivor Bird, said Beverly Percival, a secretary in the Prime Minister's office. Monique Kim Barua, who was 12 at the time of the alleged incidents, charges in her lawsuit that the Prime Minister sexually assaulted her between June 2000 and July 2001 in the north-east village of Parham, according to the suit.

Bird said he rejected the lawsuit's claims, saying again that he had never met the girl.

"I'm not surprised. I'm not worried," Bird said, adding that the charges cannot be sustained.

Barua, who is now 15, filed the suit jointly with her mother, Jacqueline Fiedtkou, in the High Court of Justice of Antigua and Barbuda. The girl's whereabouts, however, were unknown. Last week's report said she left Antigua earlier this year. She was not interviewed in the investigations.

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