 |
|
|
 Editorials | Issues | February 2007 
Mexican Prison is 'Hell,' Says Jailed Canadian
 Petti Fong - CanWest News
URGENT NOTICE! Effective January 29, 2007, Mr. Kimber's family received an urgent message today from an inmate friend of Peter's. The dire circumstances for Peter have escalated. The guards in the prison incited a riot today and Peter was severely beaten and thrown into solitary confinement. All of his personal belongings, including what few documents he possessed as evidence, were then stolen from his cell. It is imperative that all legal and political action be taken immediately to ensure the safe release of Peter Kimber. (visit the website HERE)
Starving in a Mexican jail and with little prospect of release, Mission, Canada resident Peter Kimber is still fighting mad.
He was on the telephone yesterday appealing for help to gain release from a prison in Oaxaca where he's served 2½ years of a six-year sentence.
Now, with the help of a website and family members taking his plea public, Mr. Kimber hopes that he can draw attention to his case.
He is so desperate that he has contemplated suicide, he said.
Mr. Kimber, a 44-year-old construction worker, says he has been wrongfully convicted of fraud. He and his family travelled to Mexico where he found employment on construction sites. At a site where he was helping to build a hotel, a dispute developed with the owners who told police that he owed them money.
"I'm a completely innocent man," Mr. Kimber said in a telephone interview from Reclusorio de Pochutla, the prison in Huatulco, Mexico. "If I would have paid the money, this would have all gone away."
But Mr. Kimber, who says he's regularly beaten by other inmates and is living in a "hell" with no rules or law, said he's angry there is so much corruption in the Mexican prison and judicial systems.
Since his imprisonment, he said he's been attacked with needles, starved because the prison doesn't provide food that inmates can't pay for, and has had to resort to eating out of garbage cans that other inmates use as spittoons.
Evidence he has gathered to state his case has been handed over to Mexican authorities and has been "lost."
He has been surviving on money sent by his family and by making wooden cups and saucers to sell on the outside.
When his common-law wife and his five daughters tried to help him make his case by talking to witnesses and getting receipts and invoices he used in his construction business, they were thrown in jail for six weeks, Mr. Kimber said.
One of his daughters was only 7 when she was put in jail, he said, before they were deported back to Canada.
Even if he had the money now to bribe officials to release him from jail, he's been told it would take $20,000 (U.S.).
He's fuelled by anger and a drive to bring down what he calls the "mafia" that he says makes decisions on who gets into jail and who gets out.
Mauricio Guerrero, head of the press section with the embassy of Mexico in Ottawa, said the matter is an issue for Canadian consular officials.
Alain Cacchione, a spokesman with the Foreign Affairs office, said privacy concerns prevent him from discussing any dealings the government has had with Mr. Kimber and his family.
"We can say we provided consular assistance to him in the state of Oaxaca and the last visit was on Jan. 21," Mr. Cacchione said.
There have been a number of high-profile incidents in recent months involving Canadians in Mexico.
Adam DePrisco, a Woodbridge, Ont., man died outside a nightclub in Acapulco.
His family demanded the Canadian government do more to help find the truth of what happened to him after Mexican authorities said he died in a hit-and-run accident.
Last February, an Ontario couple, Domenico and Nancy Ianiero, were brutally slain in their hotel near Cancun.
Mr. Cacchione said he did not know how many Canadians are currently in prison in Mexico.
Frances May, Canada's honorary consul who lives in Oaxaca, said she has had to deal with many cases of Canadians who end up in Mexican jails.
"A Mexican jail is not like a jail in Canada," she said. "It's hard to even say where you begin about all the differences." |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us