Fox spares 2 Mexico soldiers facing death penalty

Mexican President Vicente Fox, a firm opponent of capital punishment, said
on Wednesday he was overruling military courts and sparing 2 soldiers from
the death penalty.

In brief statements Fox's office said he had reduced the death sentence
against Sgt. Angel Velazquez Perez to 20 years in prison and would also
overturn the death sentence against Heron Varela Flores, a 2nd lieutenant
whose case became a cause for rights groups this week.

Both were convicted of killing superiors, a crime subject to punishment by
death under the military penal code.

Mexico has vigorously opposed the death penalty on the world stage, though
its own military continues to hand down the sentence.

Fox noted that the death penalty has not been applied in at least 4
decades in Mexico.

"These sentences have always been reduced by the president," a statement
from his office said.

Rights groups on Tuesday called on Fox to commute the sentence for Varela
Flores, 24, who was found guilty in a court-martial last week of murdering
a colonel in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez last February.

Varela Flores claimed he shot Col. Salvador Juarez Villa in self-defense
after years of sexual harassment and abuse by his superiors. His lawyer
and family say he did not get a fair trial in a military justice system
that is closed to scrutiny, and they have appealed to a military high
court.

While Fox was expected to follow his predecessors and reduce the sentence,
rights activists said the government should take capital punishment off
the books to make Mexican law conform with its public position on the
issue.

The constitution provides for capital punishment, although the sanction
only exists in military courts.

Mexico has gone to the World Court against the United States to appeal
more than 50 death sentences against its citizens, most recently in the
case of a Mexican national on death row in Oklahoma whose appeal was
denied on Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fox, who labels the death penalty "inhumane," has received international
recognition for his fight against it.

Any reform to the military penal code would need to be negotiated with
military chiefs, who are resisting change, rights groups say.

Military justice already is a sensitive issue for Fox, whose drive to
uncover and punish past atrocities by the army and other security forces
has so far produced no results.

(source: Reuters)

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