'Help save what's left of my life'

"MEXICO - A B.C. construction worker jailed for more than two years in Mexico over a building contract that went sour says he's been wrongly imprisoned by a corrupt system.

"Get me out of here," a frustrated Peter Kimber said yesterday from his prison cell in Huatulco, where he suffers from kidney problems and other ill health.

He said he has endured dozens of beatings and atrocious conditions because he can't pay bribes to get out.

"I want somebody to actually help save what's left of my life," he said. "I've tried it on my own for two years and four months. There's absolutely no way for a human being to fight against these people legally."

Kimber, 44, lived in Mission before moving to Mexico in 2001 with his then common-law wife, her four daughters and his three children from a previous marriage.

He said he was arrested on Oct. 15, 2004, after a couple from the U.K. reneged on a contract to have Kimber build them a home.

He said Kevin and Tess Hunneybell, who run the Oaxaca Hotel bed-and-breakfast in Huatulco, had him arrested for fraud.

Kimber related the horrors of living in inhumane conditions, where "dog-eat-dog" fights over food are common because prisoners are given $25 a month to buy food, drinking water, clothing and toiletries.

"I never envisioned eating out of garbage cans that people have been spitting in all day or beating the living hell out of someone because I want his food," he said.

Kimber estimated he's been in 150 fights and was stabbed by a blood-filled syringe during a jail robbery.

He said money he's paid for bribes to get out of the prison has been wasted and he's been asked to sign blank documents and confessions to crimes he didn't commit.

It never occurred to Kimber or his eldest daughter, Jessica, 21, who is caring for her brother, 17, and Julia, 15, in Abbotsford to go to the media before now, he said.

Jessica said she and her siblings are torn apart by their dad's imprisonment and they send him money for food when they can.

"You just don't know if every time you talk to him if it's going to be the last time," she said.

It was a chance meeting his daughters had with North Vancouver author and radio personality Anne Marie Evers at a women's fair in Abbotsford last October that put the spotlight on Kimber's case.

Evers told her friend, John Joseph Kennedy, an entrepreneur who is running as a Democrat for the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Kennedy, who with his sister had helped free their brother from a wrongful conviction in Thailand in the 1990s, kicked into action.

He set up a website, www.freepeterkimber.com, and fired off letters to the prison warden demanding an end to Kimber's ill treatment and to the International Criminal Court.

"It just made me furious the way he's been treated," Kennedy said from his Georgia home. "It's one of the cruelest injustices toward humanity. It's turned into a nightmare. It's so corrupt in that area of Mexico, with rioting and violence, it's a dangerous place. I knew I had to go over the heads of the government."

Here's a similar story from a few years ago:

Texan glad to swap a Mexican prison for one back home
THADDEUS HERRICK
23 September 1998
Houston Chronicle

ANTHONY, Texas - With rolls of razor wire surrounding its perimeter, the federal penitentiary known as La Tuna is not a great place to make a home. Unless you're Tommy Bean.

"All I know is that I'm in the United States, and I'm not in Mexico," said Bean, an East Texas gun dealer who spent the past six months in jail in Nuevo Laredo. "I'm glad to be here."

And the 59-year-old semi-retired car dealer from Vidor made one promise: He's never going south of the border again. "There's no reason anybody has to go to Mexico as far as I'm concerned," he said.

Bean was returned to the United States on Monday night under a prisoner exchange with Mexico and now seeks to end an international ordeal that began in March when he was arrested for illegally importing some 200 rounds of ammunition into Mexico.

The charge led to a conviction and a five-year sentence at Nuevo Laredo's crowded prison known as La Loma, where Bean spent the scorching spring and summer playing dominoes, watching videos and drinking orange soda. "It was not a good experience," he said. "What went through my mind more than anything was, `Will I ever get out?' "

Bean contends the incident was more an oversight than a crime. A federally licensed gun salesman, he forgot to remove four boxes of shells from his Suburban before crossing into Mexico with several friends for dinner on the evening of March 16 after a Laredo gun show.

"There's no way you can comprehend it," said Bean, dressed in khaki pants and a matching shirt issued by the U.S. prison. "They knew it was an honest mistake."

The case has shed light on a thorny international matter - the increasing number of arrests by Mexican authorities of U.S. citizens who try to cross the border but forget they are carrying either guns or ammunition or both.

Two men, Jose Elibardo Lerma and Arnulfo Ramirez Garza, were returned to the United States with Bean on charges of trafficking weapons - a gun here or some bullets there - and as many as 19 more U.S. citizens are believed to be in prison in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, for making the same mistake.

In addition to the three Americans charged with weapons violations, Monday's prisoner exchange also included 10 U.S. citizens charged with other crimes in Mexico. In return, 78 Mexican citizens who had been held in U.S. prisons were sent home.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Bean seemed relaxed and in good spirits, though he said the incident had cost him nearly $200,000, putting an end to his plan of early retirement. He said he had eaten two good meals in less than 24 hours, "more than I ate in six months down there."

But Bean is still a prisoner, and his case is not likely to be heard by the U.S. Parole Commission for up to four months. If he is granted supervised release, which is expected, Bean still could carry the label of convicted felon, which could, at the very least, end his days as a gun dealer and owner.

"That's something we'll worry about later," Bean said. "If I have a conviction, I have a conviction."

Elizabeth Rogers, an El Paso federal public defender who is representing Bean, said the Vidor man will most certainly carry a foreign conviction, though she said it is unclear how that will affect him as a gun owner and dealer in the United States.

"I have to tell my client I'm concerned about that," said Rogers. "But what he did is not illegal under our laws."
In prison in Mexico, Bean said he was visited by his wife, Sadie, once every two weeks. He was transferred from a filthy holding cell to a patio area he described as similar to a "deer camp" only after a friend paid $2,500. Running water in the prison was intermittent.

While Bean was not critical of the Mexican prison officials, he had little praise for the U.S. consul in Nuevo Laredo, Rufus Watkins. "I really have no one to compare him with," said Bean. "But I believe he could have been better."

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