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 Americas & Beyond | April 2008 
Martin Returning to Canada Even if Verdict is Guilty: Lawyer
 Charles Rusnell - Edmonton Journal
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| | Brenda Martin | | |
Jailed Canadian Brenda Martin will be back in Canada before the end of the month even if she is found guilty by a Mexican court, her lawyer says.
"I have been told that the Mexican and Canadian authorities have an agreement to extradite Brenda immediately," Guillermo Cruz Rico said Saturday in an interview in Guadalajara.
Martin has refused to sign documents that would allow her extradition to Canada if she is found guilty because they state the process could take up to nine months and she would have to serve time in a Canadian prison.
But Cruz said Mexican officials told him they will not seek any jail time for her in Mexico and Canadian officials said she would be immediately allowed back into the country.
"They said they don't care," Cruz said. "Mexico just wants her out of the country as soon as possible."
Martin's childhood friend and advocate, Deb Tieleman, said Martin has not been told about the extradition agreement.
"Brenda doesn't want to hear anything about being found guilty because she is innocent," Tieleman said Saturday. She is in Guadalajara to support Martin while she awaits a judge's ruling, which is to be released Tuesday.
A Mexican judge had promised to issue his ruling Friday but it has been delayed until Tuesday. Tieleman believes it was delayed to allow time for a Canadian politician to travel to Guadalajara.
A Mexican justice official told The Journal Friday that the judge's ruling was completed Thursday evening.
Martin, a former resident of Trenton, Ont., was employed as a chef for a former Albertan, Alyn Richard Waage, in Puerto Vallarta for 10 months in 2001. Waage was operating an Internet fraud scheme at the time though he pretended to be an investor. He was eventually arrested and is serving a 10-year sentence in an American jail.
Five years after Waage's arrest, Martin, now 51, was arrested and charged with knowingly accepting illicit funds, a charge she strenuously denies. The prosecution has admitted it has no direct evidence to support the charge. But they say there is enough circumstantial evidence to prove she must have known the money she received from Waage was obtained by fraud.
Cruz has said there is no evidence in the investigative file to support the charges against Martin. He also found she had not been provided with an interpreter either by police or the courts, which he says is a breach of both Mexican and international law. |
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