International roundup

By Agencies
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In Mexico, a long list of nonviolent crimes, such as home burglary and freight and fuel theft, bring automatic pretrial detention, with no bail or house arrest allowed.

Mexico’s Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on that “no-bail” policy, with some justices arguing it violates international treaties that say pretrial detention should be used only in “exceptional” cases to prevent suspects from fleeing justice.

Suspects accused of murder and other violent crimes seldom get released on bail anywhere in the world. 

But in Mexico, the list of charges that allow a suspect to be detained pending trial has grown to 16, among them abuse of authority, corruption and electoral crime.

Yet only about two of every 10 people accused of a crime in Mexico are ever found guilty. That means that of the estimated 92,000 suspects now in cells pending trial, often with hardened criminals, around 75,000 will spend years locked up in Mexico’s crowded, dangerous prisons, unlikely to be convicted.

Trials in Mexico can drag on for a surprisingly long time, two men were recently released with ankle monitors after spending 17 years in prison while on trial for murder. Strangely, now that they have been convicted, they are both out while pursuing appeals.

One of them, Daniel García Rodríguez, said, “We are also worried that almost 100,000 Mexicans are held in prison pending trial. They and their families are overwhelmingly poor, and pretrial detention has made them even more vulnerable.”

It all adds up to a lot of innocent people spending years in prison. 

Activists say an increasing number of Mexicans are forced to opt for a form of plea bargain simply because they are likely to spend more time in a cell trying to clear their names than they would if convicted.

President Andrés López has expanded the number of crimes considered ineligible for bail and he has publicly called on the Supreme Court not to release more people pending trial.

His administration argues that would create additional pressures or threats against judges to accept bribes in exchange for releasing suspects, and create a “revolving-door” justice system in which suspects could walk out of jail as soon as they are detained.

“It is a question of preventing them from fleeing justice, or from attacking victims or threatening witnesses, or continuing to commit crimes or direct criminal activities,” an Interior Department statement said in urging the Supreme Court not to change the rules.

Assistant Interior Secretary Ricardo Mejía argued Friday that because judges in Mexico are so corrupt, “We wouldn’t just return to the ‘revolving door,’ rather we would be talking about open doors … when there was a feeling that judges freed some criminals faster that they could be caught.”

Activists say there is also a question of whether Mexico should be locking up people for years just on the say-so of police. 

The country’s police forces aren’t known for sophisticated investigative techniques and often keep suspects locked up on the thinnest of suspicions while they try to build cases against them.

“What they do is: ‘First I’ll detain you, and then I’ll investigate you,’” said independent Sen. Emilio Álvarez Icaza, a former human rights official.

CHILE

Chileans resoundingly rejected a new constitution to replace a charter imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet 41 years ago, dealing a stinging setback to President Gabriel Boric who argued the document would have ushered in a new progressive era.

With 99% of the votes counted in Sunday’s plebiscite, the rejection camp had 61.9% support compared to 38.1% for approval amid heavy turnout with long lines at polling states, voting was mandatory for all citizens.

The approval camp conceded defeat, with its spokesman Vlado Mirosevic saying: 

“We recognize this result and we listen with humility to what the Chilean people have expressed.”

Boric, who had lobbied hard for the new document, said the results made it evident the Chilean people “were not satisfied with the constitutional proposal that the convention presented to Chile.”

Most Chileans favor changing the dictatorship-era constitution and Boric made it clear the process to amend it would not end with Sunday’s vote. 

He said it was necessary for leaders to “work with more determination, more dialogue, more respect” to reach a new proposed charter “that unites us as a country.”

The rejection was widely expected in this country of 19 million as months of pre-election polling showed that Chileans had grown wary of the proposed charter that was written by a constituent assembly in which a majority of delegates were not affiliated with a political party.

The proposed document was the first in the world to be written by a convention split equally between male and female delegates, but critics said it was too long, lacked clarity and went too far in some of its measures, which included characterizing Chile as a plurinational state, establishing autonomous Indigenous territories, and prioritizing the environment and gender parity.

“The constitution that was written now leans too far to one side and does not have the vision of all Chileans. We all want a new constitution, but it needs to have a better structure,” Roberto Briones, 41, said after voting in Chile’s capital of Santiago. 

Italo Hernández, 50, said he backed the changes as he exited the polling station in the National Stadium in Chile’s capital of Santiago. “We have to leave behind Pinochet’s constitution that only favored people with money.”

ARGENTINA

The partner of a man suspected of trying to assassinate Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been arrested by police as investigators tried to determine if the attacker was part of a wider plot.

Brenda Uliarte, the 23-year-old partner of Brazilian suspect Fernando André Sabag Montiel, was arrested Sunday night by Federal Police at a train station in the capital, Buenos Aires, according to images circulated by authorities.

She has not been charged, but officials were trying to determine if she had any role in the Sept. 1 incident in which a man pointed a Bersa 380 pistol at Fernández and pulled the trigged, though the loaded gun did not fire.

Officials also were trying to determine how and why data apparently had been wiped from a cellphone seized from Sabag Montiel, when he was caught at the scene.

The apparent assassination attempt has shaken a nation where Fernández has been a central political figure for decades, serving as president from 2007 to 2015 following the term of her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, who took office in 2003.

A judicial source said Uliarte had been present in the area where the foiled attack took place, mixed among hundreds of Fernández’s sympathizers who had come to show support at a time she faces trial on corruption allegations. 

The source spoke on condition of anonymity due to rules governing case secrecy.

Sabag, 35, had lived in Argentina for more than two decades. 

Local news media have published images from his now-inactivated social media accounts showing him with arms tattooed with Nazi-like symbols.

Investigators say they are trying to determine why the gun did not fire and also to extract information from Sabag Montiel’s cellphone. 

Authorities say it came to Airport Security Police, who are in charge of trying to inspect it, reformatted, as if it had come from the factory.