As it does most Wednesday mornings, the telephone rang at the Wustrau-Maher home in Stormville, N.Y., last week and 29-year-old Heidi Maher grabbed the receiver anxiously.

"I'm still here," 43-year-old Ted Maher told his wife, his voice traveling through 4,000 miles of wire and air.

The conversation was brief and monitored, as always, by guards at a prison in the tiny French principality of Monaco. Ted Maher, a registered nurse and former Green Beret, has been held without bail in Monaco for exactly two years Monday on suspicion he set a fire that killed one of the world's richest men and another person.

Although it has been two years and a judge has completed her pretrial investigation, Maher could not tell his wife when his trial will be held. No date has been set, and Monaco's constitutional monarchy does not guarantee incarcerated defendants the speedy trials accused people in the U.S. demand and get routinely.

"I am very angry and I'm very frustrated," Heidi Maher, who is also a nurse, told Courttv.com. "They have up to four years to bring him to trial."

Edmond Safra

It is not just the delay that has Heidi Maher worried and angry. She fears that her husband is becoming the fall guy for the failure of police and firefighters to save Ted Maher's wealthy Parkinson's disease patient and a female nurse from fire-fed toxic fumes that claimed their lives.

It was in the wee hours of Dec. 3, 1999, that Ted Maher stumbled bleeding into the lobby of a six-story bank and the residence of billionaire banker Edmond Safra, one of the richest men in the world, owned in Monaco. Maher was rushed to a hospital after reporting that masked intruders attacked him, but he was able to give Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente his cellphone and instructions to hide and call police.

Police initially believed that there were intruders and blocked firefighters from entering Safra's fortress-like penthouse for nearly an hour after Maher was taken to Princess Grace Hospital. By the time Safra and Torrente were found in a locked dressing room, it was too late.

Three days after the fire ignited headlines worldwide, a prosecutor announced that Ted Maher confessed. He stabbed himself, set a fire and made up the story about intruders to get on Safra's good side, the prosecutor told journalists. Maher's family insists the confession was coerced, but Maher did not get specific in a letter he wrote to Monaco's Prince Rainier III on May 17. He said only in vague terms that he accepts his "limited responsibility" for the tragedy and argued that he should not be made a scapegoat for the botched rescue.

Maher faces life in prison if convicted of setting the fire. His lawyers have been trying to persuade an investigative magistrate, a sort of one-judge grand jury, that a more appropriate charge would be involuntary homicide — a crime punishable by up to six years upon conviction.

Maher has served two years already and could get out in two more for good behavior if convicted under that scenario. But the judge has yet to formally recommend charges for prosecution pending the outcome of a bid by Safra's brothers for more pretrial investigation focusing on the delayed rescue.

Donald Manasse, who has handling Maher's defense pro bono, said the defense team is doing everything it can to force the speedy trial issue to a head. He anticipates that Chief Examining Magistrate Patricia Richet will conclude her work soon, clearing the way for a trial perhaps as early as this spring.

"There isn't a particular standard for speedy trial but Monaco is a member of the United Nations and there is a civil rights convention that Monaco has subscribed to that requires prompt judgments," Manasse, who is also admitted to the bar in New York and Connecticut, told Courttv.com.

The Mahers' congressional representative mentioned the convention in a November 13 letter asking Secretary of State Colin Powell to press Monaco about the lengthy incarceration without trial.

Safra mansion in Monaco

"Article 10 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that 'everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him,'" U.S. Rep. Sue Kelly (R-New York) wrote.

Kelly complained that Maher is kept in his cell 23 hours a day, has no English contacts, has been denied visits by a priest recently, and that his monitored phone calls home are disconnected without warning if he talks about the case. The congresswoman urged Powell to remind Monaco authorities that the U.S. government is monitoring Ted Maher's case despite its focus on "ongoing world events" following the September 11 terror attacks.

"I am aware that there are many differences between the legal systems of our country and Monaco, and that the judge assigned to the case has broad discretionary powers to thoroughly investigate before going to trial," Kelly continued. "In this case, Judge Richet has postponed the trial more than once for reasons that are unclear."

Kelly and her staff did not return numerous calls. Manasse, Maher's lawyer, said the UN human rights declaration obligates Monaco to move justice forward but it does not set deadlines for starting criminal trials. Only governments, not individuals, can petition the UN about lengthy pretrial detentions, he added.

Manasse said that neither Richet nor the prosecution are barriers to the setting of a trial date. The holdup is a ruling by Monaco's highest court, the Court of Revisions, which has yet to hold a hearing on a motion by Safra's brothers to force additional investigation.

Safra's widow, Lily Safra, inherited the bulk of his vast holdings, including income from the sale of Safra's Republic National Bank of New York just weeks before his death. Lily Safra escaped the fire unharmed.

Heidi Maher unsuccessfully sought to depose Lily Safra in anticipation of a civil lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. Maher claimed in court papers that people who may have been employed by Lily Safra detained her for several days after she and her brother, Todd Wustrau, traveled to Monaco to see Ted Maher in the hospital.

Safra's attorneys said in court papers that the charge has no merit and that Heidi Maher failed to articulate a claim that should be heard by a New York judge.

Heidi Maher claimed in interviews and court papers that instead of being taken to the hospital, a driver arranged by the Safra organization instead took her to Monaco's police station where she was interrogated about her husband; she says her passport was taken by police and shown to Ted Maher in order to get him to sign a false confession written in French, a language he neither speaks nor reads.

A representative of Monaco's judiciary denied that the confession was coerced in a letter to two members of Congress this summer. The official quoted from transcripts of several of Ted Maher's pretrial interviews with Richet to back the contention.

Heidi Maher said the 10 or 11 interviews her husband had with Richet — closed-court sessions she characterized as interrogations — were part of an ongoing effort by authorities to divert scrutiny of the role the delayed rescue effort played in the deaths of Edmond Safra and Vivian Torrente.

"It seems like they want a nice, clean ending to all of this and are using my husband as a scapegoat," Heidi Maher said.