Caso Cassez

Pego, también, íntegra, la nota sobre el caso Cassez que se publica hoy en el IHT. Lo hago así porque los medios mexicanos han sido todo menos objetivos, provocando discusiones que han llegado al absurdo de plantear que Florence Cassez será liberada en Francia y tomará champagne con Bruni... prefiero dejar la nota como es, objetiva y descriptiva. La Constitución establece en su artículo 18 el derecho de extranjeros a ser trasladados a su país para compurgar su pena, con base en los instrumentos internacionales que existan.

France strikes deal with Mexico on prisoner
The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
MEXICO CITY: President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has reached an agreement with Mexico to create a commission of legal experts to review the possibility of letting a Frenchwoman convicted of kidnapping in Mexico serve out her 60-year sentence in France.
The case of the woman, Florence Cassez, dominated attention Monday during an official visit by Sarkozy, who came to Mexico to strengthen economic ties. Sarkozy said Cassez had told him that she wanted to return to France to finish her sentence for three kidnappings in 2005.
Sarkozy and President Felipe Calderón of Mexico said each country would appoint legal experts to the panel to determine if the international law allowing such transfers would apply in her case.
Sarkozy said that he was seeking to help Cassez because she was a French citizen who wanted to return home, but that he did not have an opinion about the court's verdict.
"I didn't come here to challenge the decision of Mexico's justice system," he said. "I am not a judge."
Cassez's lawyer, Agustín Acosta, said if Cassez returned to France, she would have to accept her sentence and forgo any appeals. The commission is expected to give its report in three weeks and both countries are expected to accept its recommendations.
Cassez, 34, has acknowledged that she lived at the ranch where three of the kidnapped victims were held, including an 8-year-old girl. But she said she had simply been dating a Mexican arrested in the case and had not known that the people at the ranch had been kidnapped.
One of the victims, however, has identified Cassez as one of her captors.
The French news media have been fascinated by the case. A front-page headline in Libération, a newspaper in Paris, referred to it as "The Florence Cassez Headache," noting that Sarkozy had been under pressure to win Cassez's release, or at least to help her serve her term in France.
The issue is sensitive in Mexico, which has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world and where there is increasing public pressure to halt what is seen as widespread impunity for criminals.
Speaking at the National Palace in Mexico City on Monday, Sarkozy praised Calderón for Mexico's "courageous and determined battle" against drug cartels. Drug violence has claimed more than 7,200 lives since January 2008.

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