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Texas execution riles Mexico
Fox cancels trip after pleas are rejected
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Aug. 15, 2002
http://www.accessatlanta.com/
Susan Ferriss – Cox Washington Bureau
Mexico City — President Vicente Fox canceled a trip later this month to Texas, which was to have included a meeting with President Bush, because his efforts to save a Mexican citizen from execution in Texas were spurned Wednesday.
Fox was scheduled to visit Austin, three other Texas cities and Bush’s Texas ranch. But Fox’s office announced late Wednesday night that the trip was off after Javier Suarez Medina, 33, was put to death by lethal injection in a prison in Huntsville.
Fox had mounted an extraordinary personal campaign to persuade Texas Gov. Rick Perry to postpone Suarez’s execution and consider commuting it to life in prison. Mexico argued that the rights of Suarez — who killed a police officer in 1988 — were violated by police who ignored an international treaty requiring detained foreigners to be notified of their right to consular help.
Fox also called Bush, and Mexico filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court that was rejected.
Fox, the most pro-American Mexican president in recent history, was set to go to Texas on Aug. 26 through Aug. 28, where he would visit Perry in Austin, deliver a speech before the Texas Legislature and go on to Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
“The international community supported in a decided fashion the efforts of the Mexican government,” Fox spokesman Rodolfo Elizondo said in a prepared statement. “All these petitions were rejected by the authorities of the state of Texas.
“The government appreciates the diverse people and institutions in Texas that contributed to the programming of the presidential visit,” Elizondo continued. “The president laments not being able to meet with them, but it would be inappropriate to carry out this trip to Texas given these lamentable circumstances.”
Mexico does not have the death penalty and has clashed with the United States before on the issue.
Suarez was one of more than 50 Mexicans on death row in the United States, many of them in Texas.
Born in Mexico but raised in the United States from the age of 3, Suarez was sentenced to death by lethal injection for shooting to death Lawrence Cadena, a 43-year-old undercover Dallas police officer, during a 1988 drug sting in Dallas.
[...]
Fox sent a letter to Perry and Mexico organized votes in a United Nations human rights body to urge a stay of execution. The Mexican government also placed ads in some Texas newspapers.
In Washington, White House chief of staff Andrew Card said he didn’t expect the turmoil to affect long-term relations with Mexico. Card’s comments came before Fox’s decision to cancel his trip.
What is happening in Texas is “out of the control of the White House,” Card said. “[But] President Bush and President Fox have an extremely good relationship. It’s a relationship that goes back to before they both were president. I don’t think the personal relationship between the presidents is adversely affected at all.”
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