The Arrest
Florence Cassez's arrest took place on Thursday, 8 December 2005 on the Mexico City-Cuernavaca Highway, as she rode with Vallarta. She had been living with him, and they were seen together always. She was detained overnight, then moved to Vallarta's house in the early morning hours of Friday, 9 December 2005. The Mexican Federal Police, which had tipped off several journalists, staged a fake arrest that TV crews from the Mexican networks Televisa and TV Azteca reported live. Three kidnapped victims were freed and four persons—including Cassez—arrested. Cassez was then presented as a member of the kidnapping gang "Los Zodiaco", something she has always denied. Vallarta, who was the leader of the kidnapping band, also stated that Cassez had nothing to do with his kidnapping activity. Mexican public opinion is divided between those who believe she is "undoubtedly guilty," and those who believe the Felipe Calderón administration was using her as a scapegoat. There was also a debate whether judges should give preference to the legal procedure over justice, and so free Cassez, as demanded by Nicolas Sarkozy. The main irregularity was on legal procedures regarding the procedures to arrest an individual.
A few weeks later, during a live television show, Cassez called and confronted the head of Mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna, with the truth about the staged arrest. In the weeks that followed, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, the Attorney General of Mexico, was forced to admit that the arrest seen on TV was staged. He also tried to shift the blame on journalists, claiming they had requested it. As a result, one journalist, Pablo Reinah, was fired by his TV network. Reinah filed a lawsuit for defamation. In March 2007, the Mexican justice ruled that Reinah had no knowledge that the arrest of Florence Cassez and Israel Vallarta was staged.
Since August 2006, an official probe has been launched by the Mexican police against the federal agents who arrested Florence Cassez. In 21 March 2012, Three Ministers of the Mexican Supreme Court, concluded that many fundamental rights of Florence Cassez were violated in her arrest. Later that week the Procuraduría General de la República declared that it would start an investigation to search for those responsible of violating her fundamental rights and for staging the arrest.
Read more about this topic: Florence Cassez
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
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