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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
Investigators Offer to Help Mexico in Death of Canadian Tourist: MacKay
 Michael Tutton - CP
| | Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay lashed out at Mexican authorities last week for failing to protect tourists and potentially tainting a crime investigation, after a Canadian man was allegedly beaten into oblivion. (AFP/Jung Yeon-Je) |
Halifax - Canada is offering to assist in the investigations into recent deaths of Canadian tourists in Mexico, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday before meeting with Mexico's secretary of external affairs.
The most recent case involves Jeff Toews, 33, an Alberta man who died after sustaining severe brain injuries on May 7, while vacationing in Mexico.
Mexican police and authorities say the oilpatch salesman took a drunken fall from his second-storey balcony at the Moon Palace Resort in Cancun, but his family suspects he was beaten.
MacKay said he'll talk to his counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, during meetings in Halifax, about "mechanisms" that can be put in place "to expand upon co-operation around investigative techniques," in the Toews case and other deaths of Canadian tourists.
"We've had an exceptional degree of co-operation at the political level and minister Espinosa and I have spoken about these consular cases and we'll continue to do so," said MacKay.
"We're going to talk further today about some of the mechanisms we can put in place to expand upon co-operation around investigative techniques. We have a mutual legal assistance treaty. There are ways in which we can continue to demonstrate the importance of co-operating."
"These are very difficult, tragic cases involving loss of life, involving circumstances that have to be investigated fully."
Espinosa noted Mexico has invited officials from Canada's Justice Department and the RCMP to come and speak to local justice officials.
She says the investigations "are complicated and they involve very difficult procedures."
"At least in one of those recent incidents we have been working very closely together with Canadian authorities," she said.
"Only last week we had in Mexico, officials from the ministry of justice and Canadian police come down and spoke to our authorities."
The Toews incident was the latest in a string of violent incidents involving Canadian tourists in Mexico.
Last February, Domenic and Nancy Ianiero of Woodbridge, Ont., were found with their throats slit at a resort near Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Their murders have never been solved.
The district attorney handling that investigation is the same one responsible for the Toews case.
The Ianiero family and the Canadian government have called into question Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo's handling of that unsolved case.
A Cancun-area newspaper has reported that Canadian tourism to the area has plummeted since the Ianiero murders.
According to Novedades De Quintana Roo newspaper, figures from the Cancun Hotel Association say the number of Canadian visitors to Cancun plunged from 188,848 in 2005 to just 79,878 in 2006. |
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