Court Denies Ovidio Guzman Warrant Against Extradition To The U.S.
Translated excerpt:
The fifth district court in matters of amparo and federal trials, based in Toluca, State of Mexico, denied the protection of federal justice to Ovidio Guzmán López, El Ratón, son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, who was seeking to stop his extradition process to the United States, where the justice system of that country intends to try him on eleven drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
Judge Alfonso Alexander López Moreno refused to protect Guzmán López from the formalization of the international extradition request by the United States.
On March 7, during the hearing held at the Altiplano prison, Ovidio Guzmán López and his defense attorneys pointed out that the imprisoned man, who was identified by Mexican authorities as the son of El Chapo Guzmán, was not the person sought by U.S. justice. But the judge also denied him the protection of federal justice in that regard, thus validating Ovidio Guzmán’s identification.
The ruling may be appealed by Ovidio Guzman’s defense and reviewed by an appellate court.
The 40 Americans Wrongfully Detained Around The World Face An Additional Challenge At Home: The IRS
Excerpt:
When Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian was released from Iran after 544 days of imprisonment, he said his welcome home came with bills of $20,000 for unpaid taxes, late payment penalties and interest.
Rezaian had given his brother power of attorney to manage his affairs while he was abroad—but that power didn’t allow his brother to submit tax returns on his behalf. “There was no pause button for wrongful detention,” Rezaian said. “I was a hostage…Why do I have to pay taxes on that?”
Families of wrongfully detained U.S. citizens struggle to maintain detainees’ financial lives in their absence, even as they also wage daily battles to secure their loved one’s freedom. Their bureaucratic battles have spurred government officials, advocacy groups and lawmakers to search for ways to help them cut through the red tape.
A growing number of Americans are being detained by hostile governments on charges that the U.S. considers bogus. About 40 U.S. citizens are currently deemed by the federal government to be wrongfully detained, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained on a reporting trip in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg almost 100 days ago and faces a charge of espionage that he, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
Such detentions add a layer of geopolitical complexity over efforts to secure a detainee’s freedom, but in every case, there is also a blizzard of administrative tasks for a detainee’s parents or siblings or adult children to tackle at home—something many of them do as an act of faith, that the person will eventually return. ...
Rezaian—who was released in a prisoner swap in 2016—said the Internal Revenue Service was “very apologetic” over his tax bill and over time agreed to reduce the amount he owed to around $6,000, but said it could go no further. While the agency has some discretion to waive penalties, it doesn’t have the legal authority to forgive taxes or interest on the basis that the filer has been wrongfully detained.
The IRS doesn’t comment on individual tax matters, but an IRS official said the agency, when possible, “will work with the family of any individual who is being held hostage or unlawfully detained to resolve any tax issues that may arise from these heart-wrenching and unconscionable situations.”
Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, has introduced a bill with South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds that postpones tax deadlines for wrongfully detained Americans and reimburses paid late fees from people who have been unlawfully held abroad.
It is because Rezaian told him about the problem, Coons said. “When I looked at him, I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
An entire institutional machine has built up around the U.S. response to trumped-up arrests by hostile foreign governments, spearheaded by the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, a unit of the State Department.
CJNG’s El Jardinero has Journalist Tortured and Executed in Nayarit
Translated excerpt:
Shortly after a group of journalists planned to release information on El Jardinero, a cartel leader within the CJNG, hitmen arrived at the journalists’ homes in Nayarit and abducted them. One of the journalists has now been found dead alongside two narco messages.
.....The journalist Luis Martín Sánchez Íñiguez drove his wife Cecelia to her relatives house in Acaponeta, Nayarit, on July 5, 2023.
He dropped her off and returned home to finish some errands. He called Cecelia later that night to check in on her and tell her about his day. At around 8:43 pm, the couple cut their call short because of a power outage.
That phone call was the last time Cecelia ever heard her husband’s voice. At some point after their call, CJNG gunmen kidnapped Luis Sanchez. He was one of three journalists that the cartel group abducted that week in order to silence their reporting, which revealed new details about the regional CJNG leaders. Also kidnapped were journalists Jonathan Lora Ramírez and Osiris Maldonado De la Paz.
Word spread about the kidnappings and the police began looking into the three missing men. .....
.....On July 8, the location of a dead body was reported to the emergency phone line. The body was found in the town of El Ahuacate, located within the municipality of Tepic [in the state of Nayarit].
The body was found with signs of torture and two pieces of cardboard with a handwritten message. The dead body was identified by his family as one of the aforementioned men, named Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez. An autopsy has revealed that he was killed 24-48 hours prior to when his body was found [on July 8].
As for the journalist Jonathan “N”, he has been found alive and in good health, according to the corresponding victim health and psychological condition protocols.
.....reports that the hitmen took Sánchez’s computer, hard drive, and cellphone while they were abducting him. Cecelia adds that his newspaper ID and his wallet were also missing and likely taken by the men.
So far, no images of the narco messages or the location where Luis Sanchez was found have appeared online. Only a few pictures of crime scene investigators standing in the general area have been published.
Yesterday, it was reported that Osiris was found alive, presumably released by his captors. This means that now all three of the kidnapped men have been found, two of them alive and one brutally murdered.
.....The actions of the CJNG hitmen were primarily focused on preventing the release of photos of Jardinero himself.
The journalist was tortured, murdered, and left in a public space with a narco message because Jardinero wanted to intimidate other journalists into not publishing photos of him in the future.
.....Many international publications, such as the Associated Press (via The Guardian & CBS), BBC, Al Jazeera, and Reuters have picked up on the story about Luis Sánchez being kidnapped and murdered. It adds to the larger narrative about how dangerous it is for journalists who live in Mexico.
But what has not been picked up on is who he was writing about prior to his death (El Jardinero) and who controls Nayarit, the state the murder happened in (El Jardinero).
International coverage of the event has not even bothered to mentioned the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) in relation to the murder - even though it is the only group believed to currently operate in Nayarit and has been cited as such in multiple reputable sources, including the Mexican government’s own intelligence.
Any modicum of research into the state would have shown that the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación was deserving of, at the very least, a brief mention in their articles. But instead, we get from these international media companies, a litany of bland articles which mention the same statistics on violence against journalists in Mexico that are always mentioned.
The journalists in Mexico are facing a real and present danger from narcos when they write, along with a repressive set of Mexican laws which forbid the showing of faces and the printing of full names of cartel figures prior to them being convicted. Their inability to write fully on these topics is, in many ways, understandable.
.....the international journalists who are paid to report on these topics should be taking full advantage of their safety from cartel retribution and their freedom from Mexico’s legal system, and put in some degree of research when covering the murder of a Mexican journalist, not if it happens - but when it happens next time.