A UN panel has ruled that Nestora Salgado is a political prisoner and should be freed, but the United States ignores her plight even though she is a US citizen
The family of former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and is presumed to be held by the Iranian government, complains that the U.S. government has done little to secure his release and return home.
Levinson is not the only US citizen imprisoned in a foreign country on dubious or no charges. Nestora Salgado has been imprisoned in Mexico since August 2013 because she established and led a police force in the town where she was born and raised, to protect the people there from the drug cartels and from corruption. What she did was perfectly legal under Mexican law.
But when her police force arrested some girls for selling dope, she was arrested for kidnapping and has been imprisoned without a trial ever since. While a UN panel has declared Salgado a political prisoner who should be feed, the government of the United States has turned a blind eye to her plight. I guess it’s because the Obama administration does not want to antagonize the government of Mexico.
UN PANEL RULED THAT NESTORA SALGADO IS A POLITICAL PRISONER
Borderland from El Daily Post
February 3, 2016
The United Nation's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva, Switzerland has ruled that the detention and continued imprisonment Nestora Salgado by Mexican authorities was and is illegal and arbitrary. The ruling was made in December, over a month ago, but only communicated to her lawyers Tuesday. No explanation was given for the delay.
El Daily Post, reported today that the UN group said;
“In the first place, there is no doubt that the arrest and detention without charges is illegal and thus arbitrary." Not only did the panel call the arrest arbitrary it said Mexico "should not only free her but also compensate her for the violation of her human rights.Furthermore, the military arresting civilians for presumed crimes when national security is not at risk is worrying.”
Salgado grew up in Olinalá, a mountainous town of farmers and artisans in Guerrero. She legally migrated to the US when she was 20 years old and settled in the Seattle area, married a US citizen, and ultimately applied for and was granted US citizenship.
After making several trips back home to visit family in Olinala she became increasingly concerned about the lawlessness and cartel domination that her hometown was experiencing. That concern and anguish reached a boiling point a taxi driver was killed for not paying a "piso" (protection money) to a cartel.
She organized and led a community police force, (completely legal for indigenous communities under state and federal law) with mounted patrols to protect residents from organized crime and corruption. She was viewed as a local hero much the same as Dr. Mireles was in Michoacan.
But she was to meet much the same fate as Dr. Mireles when she was arrested in August 2013 by federal and state authorities for "kidnapping". A federal judge cleared her of those charges but she has continued to be held in prison on related state charges even though Guerrero’s governor called for her release last year.
Salgado was accused of kidnapping in connection with the arrest of several teenage girls on suspicion of drug dealing, and of a town official who was allegedly trying to steal a cow at the scene of a double killing.
Even though state law allows Olinalá and Guerrero’s other indigenous communities to organize their own police forces and make arrests, the families of the detained girls complained to state and federal officials who then said the arrests were illegal and constituted kidnapping.
In her first interview in June of 2015 (nearly 2 years after her arrest) with the international press since her imprisonment Nestora told the Guardian she was guilty of nothing more than helping her community stand up to the narcos and their corrupt political allies, and called on the Mexican government to release her and drop all the charges.
“I have no regrets about what I did, and I never will have any regrets,” she told the Guardian. “I am not a person who likes to confront the authorities, but in a place where dialogue is not possible, what else can you do?”
In the Guardian interview:
Sitting on her prison hospital bed in white and blue flannel pyjamas, Salgado, 43, said she had never underestimated the risks involved in taking a stand.
“The government is against people who want to do the right thing and protect their communities,” she said. “I know I have made my family suffer, but it is a sacrifice that had to be made.”
“I knew that when I started to expose the municipal government that there was a risk I would be arrested or killed,” she said. “I didn’t care. It was necessary.”
Government officials ignored her US passport. She was denied contact with her lawyers and family for almost year. Since imprisonment she has been denied adequate medical care and access to clean water, although recently she was moved to another prison ostensibly so she could get better medial care.
The ruling by the 5 person UN panel is not binding on Mexico but her supporters are hopeful that it will increase the pressure on EPN to release her from prison. Since she is a US citizen her supporters also plan to use this UN ruling to again demand the US Department of State to press Mexico for her release.
As reported in El Daily Post, The International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University Law School has been pursuing her case at the U.N.’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva, Switzerland, for about two years.
Thomas Antkowiak, the law clinic’s director. said of the report;
“This is a very important channel for political pressure: We have an impartial, international panel that says she’s detained illegally. I think it’s kind of a breakthrough,” he said. “We’ve been in ongoing negotiations with the government in Mexico, the federal government mainly, and those have gone nowhere. We’re hoping this is going to inject new life into those negotiations.”
1 comment:
She is lucky she's not dead!
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