Report: Jon Hammar to be released from Mexican prison today
Report: Jon Hammar to be released from Mexican prison today
Published December 21, 2012
FoxNews.com
DEVELOPING: Jon Hammar, the U.S. Marine imprisoned in Mexico on a gun charge, will be released today, his mother told Fox News Radio.
Olivia Hammar said the judge hearing Hammar's case issued a ruling in his favor and that her son is to be released at a time on Friday yet to be announced. No more details were available. Hammar, 27, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been stuck in a notorious, drug cartel-controlled prison just 15 miles south of the U.S. border since Aug. 13, after he crossed into Mexico and declared an antique shotgun to Mexican customs officials.
News of his pending release came just a day after a letter surfaced from Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. that insisted Hammar's case would go to trial.
"This circumstance requires that he remain under detention during the duration of his trial," Arturo Sarukhan said in the letter.
Hammar, who was charged with a federal level weapon felony and faces up to 15 years in a Mexican prison for what his travel companion said was a breakdown in communication at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has been held in the notorious CEDES prison in Matamoros, Mexico, ever since. The prison is just 15 miles south of the border.
But there were questions about the case from the beginning. Ian McDonough, 27, a friend and fellow Marine who was with Hammar when he was nabbed, told FoxNews.com that four U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents told Hammar before he crossed into Mexico that as long as the required permit, which he completed, was submitted and he declared the gun to Mexican authorities, there would be no problem in bringing the vintage shotgun across the border.
The gun was a family heirloom that Hammar planned to use on a hunting and surfing trip in Costa Rica. Hammar, who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and McDonough hoped to forget about the horrors of war with some relaxation in the Central American nation after driving south through Mexico in their Winnebago.
On Thursday, two Republican congressmen called for a national travel boycott of Mexico until the country releases Hammar, urging "all Americans" to campaign for the war veteran's freedom by turning off the tap on America's tourism dollars. His case was also embraced by supporters through an extensive social media effort anchored by www.facebook.com/FreeJonHammarhttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v...ernal-link.png.
"We never leave a brother behind. We never leave a Marine behind. We have to do something," screams the title of the page.
Read more: Report: Jon Hammar to be released from Mexican prison today | Fox News
Mexican ambassador alludes to Fast and Furious as reason for jailing ex-Marine
December 21, 2012 | 11:17 am
Joel Gehrke
Washington Examiner
Against expectations, former U.S. Marine Jon Hammar is reportedly being released, but not before the Mexican government blamed gun trafficking from the United States in a letter explaining his extended imprisonment on a technicality.
Hammar was arrested for bringing an antique shotgun into Mexico, after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials told him he would be able to register it with the Mexican government.
“As you know well, Mexico has had very stringent gun-control laws in place for many years, and have reinforced their application as a result of the flow of weapons illicitly purchased in the U.S. and then trafficked into Mexico and into the hands of transnational criminal organizations,” Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, wrote yesterday in a letter to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who has helped lead efforts to pressure the Mexican government into releasing Hammar.
That could be a simple swipe at U.S. law enforcement who fail to stop weapons from crossing the border, but it’s hard not to hear an allusion to Operation Fast and Furious, which saw U.S. officials facilitate weapons purchases in the U.S. by Mexican drug cartels who smuggled the arms back into Mexico.
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by drug smugglers armed through Fast and Furious; the weapons have also been used on the Mexican people. “A gun found at the scene of a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen died was part of the botched ‘Fast and Furious’ operation,” CBS reported this week.
Ros-Lehtinen, who called for Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to “come clean” about Operation Fast and Furious, announced this morning that Hammar will be released today.
One Old Vet
Mexican ambassador alludes to Fast and Furious as reason for jailing ex-Marine | WashingtonExaminer.com
