New pieces keep emerging in the case of alleged blackmail involving Bob Awana, the governor’s chief of staff and administrative director of the state, referred to yeterday by the defendant’s lawyer as “the purported victim”.

Federal public defender Pamela J. Byrne, who represents the defendant in the case, Rajdatta Patkar, yesterday filed a motion in federal court disclosing “that the government has requested that counsel and defendant sign a proposed order in which the name of the alleged victim and certain details of the instant offense are not revealed unless and until there is a trial on the merits. The government does not require itself to sign its proposed order.”

In an accompanying declaration, Byrne credits prosecutors with turning over “several hundred pages” of documents, but says several key items were missing, including “the content of the e-mails that form the basis of the charge,” which allegedly demanded payment in exchange for not making public “the purported victim’s unseemly e-mails to another person.”

The discovery issues are complicated, in part because the case involves the use of three languages: English, Japanese, and a dialect of Filipino unknown to counsel; and in part because the discovery involves the law of three jurisdictions: Japan, India, and the United States.

Byrne said Patkar refused to sign an agreement strictly limiting disclosure of information about the case after the government refused to make certain unspecified amendments to the legal language.

“…the time has come to clarify what the paramets are, and what, if any, statutes or case alw the governent relies upon to support its position that Mr. Patkar cannot discuss the details of his case with anyone other than his counsel.”

And while the attorneys argue over disclosure of information about the person referred to in the indictment only as “R.A.”, the Star-Bulletin today entered the fray with a story based on an interview with Awana, who again publicly acknowledges his identity as the man otherwise referred to as “R.A.”

The key thing here, to me, is the disclosure that the case involves multiple languages and that issues relating to the translation of key documents are likely to be central to the case and the question of whether the e-mails were intended as blackmail or something else.

Meanwhile, local blogger Ryan Ozawa managed to capture the video from KHON’s evening newscast on Saturday when a series of video problems led sports anchor John Veneri to finally say on camera, “this really sucks.” Ozawa posted the short clip on YouTube where it was viewed 117 times, but yesterday YouTube notified Ozawa the video had been removed “as a result of a third-party notification by KHON 2 claiming that this material is infringing.”

While the video has disappeared from YouTube, as of this morning it was still viewable on Google Video. And there’s a long discussion on Hawaii Threads about the incident, for those who crave more.

Oh, you can click on the screen capture below to see it at full size.