Jackson aide booked family's Brazil flight says witness

SANTA MARIA, California - Michael Jackson's travel agent told jurors in the entertainer's child molestation trial that she was asked to book a last-minute, one-way flight to Brazil for the family of Jackson's accuser.

Prosecutors, who are winding up their case against the 46-year-old entertainer, used Cynthia Montgomery's testimony to try to corroborate claims by the boy's mother that Jackson and his aides imprisoned the family and threatened to whisk them off to Brazil.

Montgomery, a Las Vegas travel agent, also backed earlier testimony that Jackson had standing orders to be served wine in soda cans when flying -- a key claim by prosecutors who seek to prove the pop star plied his intended victim with alcohol in order to abuse him.

In addition to molesting a then-13-year-old cancer survivor, Jackson is charged with conspiring to commit false imprisonment, child abduction and extortion. He faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all 10 criminal counts.

Jackson has pleaded innocent.

Montgomery is the target of both a lawsuit by Jackson and a federal investigation over a November 2003 incident in which Jackson was secretly videotaped consulting with his lawyer on a later flight he took to surrender to police in Santa Barbara.

The family of Jackson's accuser never used the US$15,000 tickets purchased for the hastily arranged trip to Sao Paulo booked at the request of Marc Schaffel, a member of Jackson's inner circle and a producer of gay porn films.

Montgomery testified under a grant of immunity, meaning that the statements she made could in court could not be used by the FBI as evidence against her.

'MAKE MR. JACKSON LOOK GOOD'

She told jurors that Schaffel, one of Jackson's unindicted co-conspirators, told her to book a one-way ticket to Brazil for the family of Jackson's accuser for a departure in March 2003.

"He asked me to make flight arrangements for four passengers to Brazil," Montgomery said, adding that she picked an arbitrary return date for the open-ended booking.

Also on Tuesday, Jackson's personal photo director testified about the circumstances surrounding a videotaped interview with the family of Jackson's accuser -- a so-called rebuttal tape -- that has become central to the case.

Hamid Moslehi said he was told to shoot the documentary in a bid "to make Mr. Jackson look good."

Prosecutors claim that Jackson's camp panicked after the broadcast of a controversial February 2003 documentary about the pop star in which he was shown holding hands with his accuser and defended his practice of sharing his bed with boys.

"We were trying to show that basically there was nothing between Mr. Jackson and (the boy) that they were showing in the media," Moslehi said.

Moslehi said it was well after midnight when the family was brought to his home in the Los Angeles area and shooting of the rebuttal tape began.

On the tape, which has been played for jurors, the mother of Jackson's accuser and other members of the family lavish praise on the entertainer as a benevolent father-like figure.

The accuser's mother, who took US$2,000 from Moslehi as a loan she never repaid, later said those remarks were scripted by Jackson's camp.

At one point, in preparing the rebuttal tape, Moslehi said he overheard Schaffel saying of the family: "We've got to get them out of the country."

Moslehi has filed a lawsuit against Jackson claiming unpaid invoices, which he said at one point totalled US$250,000.

- REUTERS