Mexican court orders release of Frenchwoman

MEXICO CITY (AP) ― A Mexican Supreme Court panel voted Wednesday to release Florence Cassez, a Frenchwoman who says she was unjustly sentenced to 60 years in prison for kidnapping.

Cassez has become a cause celebre in France, and irregularities in her case strained bilateral relations.

The five-justice panel voted 3-2 to order Cassez released because of procedural and rights violations during her arrest. The justices pointedly did not rule on her guilt or innocence, but said the violations of due process, the right to consular assistance and evidentiary rules were so big as to invalidate the original guilty verdict against her.

Cassez, 38, was arrested in 2005 and convicted of helping her Mexican then-boyfriend run a kidnap gang.

“I’m crazy with happiness, I can’t say anything else,” her mother, Charlotte Cassez, said in France. “I’m still struggling to believe it.”

Mexican police acknowledged they staged a televised raid on a ranch outside Mexico City to depict the rescue of the hostages and detention of Cassez. After Cazzez was detained and incognito for a day, Mexican police hauled her back to the ranch and forced her to participate in their staging of the raid for television cameras, a sort of media display that is not unusual in Mexico.

She said she had lived at the ranch, but said she did not know the victims were being held there.

Justice Arturo Zaldivar said during discussion of the ruling that “if she had been turned over to court custody promptly, if she had been allowed prompt consular assistance, this (raid) staging couldn’t have taken place, and the whole affair would have been totally different.”

The doe-eyed Cassez spent seven years in prison and became the center of a vigorous debate between Mexicans who say she was abused by the criminal justice system and those who say setting her free would only reinforce a sense that crimes such as kidnapping go unpunished.

“I think this is a great victory from the personal and human point of view, and it also sets an important precedent for Mexico,” one of Cassez’s lawyers, Agustin Acosta, told local media outside the courtroom.

Police torture and fabrication of evidence were long tolerated in Mexico. “Today the court freed an innocent person.”

Ezequiel Elizalde, a kidnap victim who testified against Cassez, reacted angrily to the court decision. Elizalde told local media the Mexican justice system had been discredited by the ruling, and that citizens should no longer depend on it. “Get a weapon, arm yourself, and don’t pay any attention to the government.”

At least one victim identified her as one of the kidnappers, though only by her voice, not by sight.

Another of Cassez’s lawyers, Frank Berton, said Cassez “is going to go free, in a few minutes or a few hours,” and said she would probably fly back to France as soon as this evening.

“Justice has been done in Mexico for this young woman, who has spent seven years stating her innocence and the violation of her rights,” Berton said.

Cassez was originally sentenced in 2008 to 96 years in prison for four kidnappings. The sentence was reduced to 70 years a year later when she was acquitted of one of the charges.

Early last year, a court rejected a plea to dismiss the charges and confirmed the 60-year sentence.

Mexico’s Supreme Court has become more independent in recent years, and the public has become more willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of the justice system.

A widely viewed documentary film, “Presumed Guilty,” detailed the story of a man arrested off the street and held for several years for a murder he didn’t commit.