Marine vet to be released from Mexican jail
Marine vet to be released from Mexican jail
By Sandra Dibble 4:55 P.M.OCT. 31, 20140
http://media.utsandiego.com/img/phot...053cbc530c46a8Andrew Tahmooressi during an interview earlier this year. — Alejandro Tamayo/UT
TIJUANA — A Mexican federal district judge in Tijuana on Fridayordered the immediate release of a U.S. Marine veteran behind bars in Baja California on federal weapons charges.
Andrew Tahmooressi was on trial for crossing the border with ammunition and three loaded weapon on March 31. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office agreed to cease its prosecution of Tahmooressi and allow him to return to the United States.
The agreement brings to a close a high-profile case that has resounded far beyond the border. In the United States, it has prompted calls for his release from politicians, veterans groups, conservative talk show hosts. But for months there had been an impasse, as Mexican federal prosecutors insisted that the case be resolved through the courts -- not through diplomatic or political pressure.
Tahmooressi, 26, claims that he drove into Tijuana by mistake on a Monday night after taking a wrong turn near the Mexican border in San Ysidro. He recently had moved from Florida to San Diego, and says that he was driving out of a parking lot, intending to head north. But instead he drove into the El Chaparral Port of Entry, where Mexican customs inspectors examined his pickup truck and found more 400 rounds of ammunition and three loaded firearms: a 45-caliber pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a 5.56mm assault rifle.
His release from El Hongo State Penitentiary outside Tecate was ordered by Judge Victor Octavio Luna Escobedo of the Sixth Federal District Court in Tijuana. Had Tahmooressi been convicted, he would have faced from seven to 21 years behind bars.
Even though the U.S. State Department reports that dozens of U.S. citizens are arrested each month for violating Mexico’s gun laws, few if any cases have gotten such wide attention.
Tahmooressi’s situation initially elicited little public sympathy in Mexico, where there is no constitutional right to bear arms. A headline last May in the Tijuana newsweekly, Zeta read: "He did not enter Mexico in error." But his detention did strike a nerve with some sectors in the United States intent on seeing him released.
http://media.utsandiego.com/img/phot...c8bbae7a2ee918
The weapons and ammunition confiscated from Andrew's Tahmooressi's vehicle.
Portraying Tahmooressi as a U.S. war hero unjustly detained in a foreign country, they invoked his military service — two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the U.S. Marines, with an honorable discharge in 2012, and stressed that Tahmooressi needed to return to the United States for treatment. Shortly before his arrest he had been diagnosed with PTSD and started treatment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla.
“I firmly believe that Sgt. Tahmooressi meant no harm, nor willfully violated Mexican law when he crossed the border,” said Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., chair of a House subcommittee that held a hearing last month to call attention to the case.
Benítez, his Tijuana defense attorney, used a range of tactics to win his release. He initially pressed for dismissal of the case on the grounds that his client’s rights were allegedly violated when he was held at the El Chaparral Port of Entry for hours without the presence of an attorney or a translator.
But in recent weeks, the attorney focused on Tahmooressi’s PTSD in an attempt to win him a humanitarian release. Key testimony came from a prosecution witness, Dr. Alberto Pinzón Picaseño. The Mexico City psychiatrist interviewed Tahmooressi and concluded that he suffers from a condition that has him feeling in constant danger, recommending treatment “by specialized persons in his country of origin.”
While Tahmooressi’s case made its way through Mexico’s federal court system, his supporters in the United States sought to apply political pressure on Mexico — and on the Obama administration, as they chastised the U.S. officials for not speaking out publicly and pleading his case directly with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The campaign included a White House petition, a congressional hearing, and a push for a House resolution, the majority of whose backers have been Republican members of Congress, including Duncan Hunter of Alpine, an early and vocal advocate for Tahmooressi's release. National Republican figures speaking out on his behalf include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton, head of the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Tahmooressi’s case also drew the attention of at least one well-known Democrat, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who visited Tahmooressi last week at El Hongo State Penitentiary. He said Mexican authorities were cooperative and pronounced Tahmooressi in “good spirits.”
Yet seven months after his detention, there are still unanswered questions in Tahmooressi's story.
The Tijuana newsweekly, Zeta, was the first to report that on the day of his arrest, Tahmooressi had walked into Mexico from San Ysidro, and rented a room at the Hotel Nelson near the border, paying 309 pesos — about $24. He did not stay overnight, instead walking back across to San Ysidro, retrieving his truck at a parking lot–and driving into Mexico.
Mexican customs inspectors said they found a pistol in a pocket beneath the driver’s side window, and the other weapons also within reach.
“What really struck the customs and military personnel was that all the weapons were loaded,” said Alejandro González Guilbot, the Mexican customs administrator at the time. “By his not saying that he was a Marine or an ex-Marine, it’s natural that they found this very strange.”
After initially claiming that he never before had visited Mexico, he later admitted to having crossed four times prior to his detention, telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo that “I went with my friends a couple of times to Mexico just to hang out.”
Tahmooressi’s mother, Jill, said that the lawyer initially hired by the family coached her son to lie; the attorney has declined comment while the case is ongoing.
As proof that he crossed by mistake, supporters point to Tahmooressi’s 911 call from the border, telling an operator that he had had not intended to cross the border.
Others point to inconsistencies in his account.
Tahmooressi said in an interview with U-T San Diego that he tried to stop his vehicle before going through the customs gates at the El Chaparral Port of Entry, but a woman standing by the gates waved him through. Yet a Mexican customs surveillance video viewed by the UT-San Diego shows him driving straight through.
Though U.S. supporters have stressed Tahmooressi’s military service, Mexican authorities have said that Tahmooressi was not acting in any official capacity at the time he crossed the border, and did not identify himself as a Marine.
“Mr. Tahmooressi entered Mexico as a civilian,” according to the only statement on the case issued by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office. “He was neither in uniform, nor was he on active duty, nor was he driving an official vehicle when he crossed the border.” The attorney general’s office maintained that the case was a neither a diplomatic nor political matter, but “strictly a legal issue which will be resolved by the Mexican federal courts.”
Tahmooressi might well have been in violation of the law north of the border as well had he been caught driving with weapons that were loaded and not properly stored. California law stipulates that all weapons must be unloaded while being transported, and handguns and assault weapons must be stored in a locked container. Non-concealable firearms such as shotguns and rifles are not required to be in a locked container, but must be unloaded, the law states.
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