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Corporation : MEXICO CITY_A Mexican official
said his government was "enormously pleased" by
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry's decision Wednesday to
commute the death sentence against Mexican
convict Osbaldo Torres to life without
parole.
Mexican officials stressed the role played by
their government, which filed appeals, launched
a letter-writing campaign and enlisted the
support of other nations _ including the
European Union _ in the effort to save Torres
from execution.
"We are enormously pleased by this, because
it saves Osbaldo Torres from execution," Arturo
Dager Gomez, chief legal counsel for Mexico's
Foreign Relations Department, told the
government news agency Notimex.
"This is a step forward, it is very good
signal, a very positive signal," Dager Gomez
said, referring to the cases of 50 other
Mexicans on U.S. death rows who are covered by a
recent World Court decision that helped
influenced the Thursday commutation.
Henry commuted the death sentence hours after
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted 3-2
to give Torres an indefinite stay of execution,
based on the state's failure to inform him of
his right to contact the Mexican consulate after
his arrest.
The governor's decision, which makes the
appeals court decision moot, came after the
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended
clemency for Torres on May 7. Torres, who had
been scheduled to die Tuesday, was convicted in
the 1993 deaths of Francisco Morales and Maria
Yanez during a burglary.
Henry's decision also came on the same day
that the European Union announced it had sent a
letter to the Oklahoma governor asking him to
stay the execution.
Art Agnew, Ireland's ambassador to Mexico and
the EU's representative in Mexico, told Mexican
senators that the EU had also asked state and
federal authorities to grant stays to 50 other
Mexican death row inmates in the United
States.
The International Court of Justice in The
Hague, Netherlands, ruled on March 31 that the
rights of 51 inmates, including Torres, were
violated because they were not told they could
receive help from their countries' consulates as
guaranteed by the 1963 Vienna Convention.
"The European Union could not remain silent
if the execution of this man went ahead in
defiance of the International Court of Justice,"
said the EU letter regarding Torres, which was
sent last week.
Agnew divulged the contents of the letter
during a meeting Thursday between Mexican
senators and representatives of 19 of the EU's
25 members.
Agnew noted that the EU favors elimination of
the death penalty throughout the world and he
congratulated Mexico for taking steps to
completely eliminate the punishment from Mexican
law, even though an execution hasn't been
carried out here since 1961.
President Vicente Fox and other top Mexican
officials wrote personal appeals to Henry for a
stay of execution.
And the Foreign Relations Department stressed
in a press release that the court-ordered stay
issued earlier in the day was in part the result
of a friend-of-the-court, or amicus brief, filed
by the Mexican government.
The department said five Mexicans have been
executed in the United States since the death
penalty was reinstated there in 1976, but that
about 70 others had their sentences commuted, in
part because of the efforts of the Mexican
government. .end (paragraph)<<AP
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