 |
|
Suarez execution was carried out despite pleas from Mexican President Vicente Fox, the European Union and international organizations. |
AUSTIN,
Texas, August 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Condemned Mexican
national Javier Suarez Medina was executed Wednesday, August 14, one
day after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles - ignoring widespread
international opposition - unanimously rejected 17-0 a plea to halt
his execution and commute his sentence to life in prison.
Suarez,
33, was executed Wednesday by lethal injection in
Huntsville
for the 1988 murder of an undercover police officer in
Dallas
,
Texas
. His execution was carried out despite pleas from Mexican President
Vicente Fox, the European Union and international organizations.
Suarez
had been on death row in the southern
U.S.
state of
Texas
for 13 years, convicted in 1989 for the murder of police officer Larry
Cadena, who was working undercover in
Dallas
as a drug trafficker.
Suarez
had admitted to killing the police officer but stated he believed the
undercover agent was a drug dealer.
He
is one of 17 Mexican nationals facing the death penalty in
Texas
. Suarez has had international support for his case, including from
the Mexican government, the European Union and U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell Tuesday calling for clemency.
Robinson
wrote that Suarez’s “right as a foreign national to seek legal
assistance from his consulate was not respected,” according to a
copy of the letter.
Robinson
also said there were “serious concerns that the trial proceedings in
the case of [Suarez] had not complied with international human rights
standards.”
Mexico
, which does not have capital punishment, maintains that in violation
of the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations on diplomatic protocol,
which the
U.S.
has signed,
U.S.
authorities did not inform Suarez he could seek counsel from Mexican
consular officials, and that he was unaware the victim was in fact an
undercover police officer posing as a drug dealer.
Under
the Convention, foreign nationals who are detained have a right to
contact their consulates for help. Suarez was not informed about these
rights, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Mexico
said the death sentence against him is illegal and that it could take
the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in an eleventh-hour appeal, reports
news agencies.
Mexican
President Vicente Fox stepped into the dispute Monday, complaining of
several "serious violations" in the trial process, and had
telephoned Perry, asking him to personally intervene and suspend the
execution.
Fox
pointed out to Perry that Suarez’s lawyers argued that Suarez would
have avoided the death penalty if he had been given timely legal help,
which he was denied by not being able to ask for assistance from the
Mexican consulate.
“As
a result of that violation, not only was Mr. Suarez Medina deprived of
his right to the benefit of his country’s assistance when he most
needed it, but the Mexican government was also prevented from
providing priority assistance that might have influenced the outcome
of his trial,” he said.
Fox
also cancelled a trip later this month to
Texas
, where he was expected to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush,
over the matter.
A
statement read late Wednesday in
Mexico City
by a presidential spokesman stated that the cancellation of Fox’s
August 26-28 visit to
Texas
was “a show of unequivocal repudiation of the execution of Mexican
Javier Suarez
Medina
.”
Minnesota
attorney Sandra Babcock said in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court,
meanwhile, that Texas “should not be permitted to damage the United
States’ relationship with its allies [or] invite international
condemnation,” noting that the International Court of Justice had
declared that U.S. authorities must review the conviction and sentence
in cases where foreign nationals were deprived of their consular
rights and sentenced to death.
Amnesty
International said in a statement that the “ongoing failure of
United States
authorities to remedy violations of consular rights has been a deep
concern” for the group for many years.
It
added that, “new mitigating evidence discovered with the recent
assistance of Mexican consular authorities has cast serious doubts on
the fairness of [Suarez’s] trial and sentence.
“Mexican
authorities also maintain that
Texas
police repeatedly provided false and misleading information to them
regarding Suarez’s nationality, thus preventing consular assistance
until the trial had been concluded.”
The
Death Penalty Information Center reported that 40 people have been put
to death in the
United States
since January 2002, with half of those executions occurring in
Texas
.
More
than 3,500 inmates sit on death rows across the
United States
, 122 of them nationals of 33 foreign countries. More than two-dozen
of the 453 inmates on
Texas
death row are foreigners - 18 of them from
Mexico
.
Texas
executes more individuals than any other state in the
U.S.
and has been given the moniker “the Texas Death Machine” by human
rights advocates.
