MEXICO CITY (IPS)�The Mexican government is working hard to
get Mexican citizen Javier Suarez off death row in Texas before he goes
to the execution chamber on Aug. 14.
Mr. Suarez was convicted of killing an undercover drug agent in 1988.
He has exhausted all standard appeals, and his lawyers hope to either
convince the governor to grant clemency, or to argue that the U.S.
violated international law by not offering him assistance from the
Mexican Consulate when he was arrested.
With the support of U.S. attorneys, Mexican officials are also
seeking commutation of the sentences of another 53 Mexicans on death
row, whose execution dates have not yet been scheduled.
In its effort to get Mr. Suarez removed from death row, the
government of President Vicente Fox has turned to the U.S. Supreme
Court, filed a direct request with the George W. Bush administration,
and brought a complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights.
In addition, Mexico is seeking the support and solidarity of the
European Union and international human rights groups.
Since 1993, four Mexican nationals have been executed in the United
States, three of them in Texas.
But after 15 years on death row, Ricardo Aldape, a Mexican citizen,
finally got the U.S. courts to reopen his case. He was released from
prison in 1997, but died shortly afterwards in a traffic accident.
A spokesman for the Mexican Foreign Ministry said a "grave injustice"
was being committed in the case of Mr. Suarez, who was convicted of the
murder of an anti-narcotics agent. He said the Fox administration would
do everything possible to halt his execution.
The Mexican government bases its case on the fact that Mr. Suarez,
who was arrested 14-years-ago at age 24, was not notified at the time of
his arrest of his right to make contact with the Mexican consulate�a
step that can be fundamental in keeping legal proceedings from ending in
a death sentence.
Failing to allow foreign detainees to seek support from their
consulate is a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,
to which the United States is a signatory, Mexican officials point out.
That legal argument, which halted the execution of Mexican citizen
Gerardo Valdez in May, forms the keystone of the defense of a majority
of the Mexicans who have been convicted in the United States.
In 1999, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, an Organization of
American States body, ruled that the executions of Mexicans in the
United States violate the Vienna Convention and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
U.S. attorney Sandra Babcock, hired by the Fox administration to work
on behalf of Mexicans on death row in the United States, said they are
victims of prejudice and racism.
Around 98 percent of U.S. prosecutors are White, and only one percent
are of Latino origin, she pointed out, arguing that this seems to be one
of the factors leading a majority of prosecutors to seek the death
penalty when a murder victim is White.
Of the more than 3,000 people on death row in the United States, more
than half are Black, Hispanic or of Asian extraction.
