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 Editorials | Issues | May 2008 
Brenda Martin Overjoyed To Be Home
 Charles Rusnell - Edmonton Journal
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| | Canadian Brenda Martin steps on a plane bound for Canada in Guadalajara, Mexico May 1, 2008. Martin, who has been in a Mexican jail for two years, is being sent back to Canada to serve the rest of a five-year sentence. | | |
Edmonton - The anger and bitterness that consumed Brenda Martin during more than two years in a Mexican prison disappeared the moment she landed on Canadian soil.
"She said that was the most exciting feeling in the world to land on Canadian soil," said Deb Tieleman, Martin's childhood friend and leader of the public campaign to free Martin. "The minute that plane landed in Canada the bitterness just evaporated."
"She is overwhelmed with gratitude to everyone who has helped her and it is seriously genuine," said Tieleman after speaking with Martin by telephone from the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener-Waterloo. "Her attitude, her whole demeanour has changed."
A handcuffed Martin boarded a government Challenger jet in Guadalajara, Mexico this morning for the four-hour flight to Kitchener. She returned to a cold rain and a media circus.
As the government jet carrying Martin and officials from Canada and Mexico touched down at the Kitchener airport at 3:46 p.m., dozens of reporters and cameramen waited behind a chain link fence hoping for a sighting of the frail former chef.
Tieleman, the public face of the campaign to free Martin for the past eight months, was also there.
"I just wanted her to see that I was here for her," Tieleman said.
But neither Tieleman nor any of the media got what they had come for. A fuel truck blocked the sightline to the Challenger jet's door, and Martin was whisked away in a Correctional Services Canada van to the Grand Valley Institution, a maximum security prison in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Prison officials allowed Martin to make one phone call after her arrival. She called Tieleman.
"She said, 'Debbie, this is Brenda. Thank you. Thank you, Thank you. Thank everybody for me. I am so grateful to be home.' You would not think it was the same person," Tieleman said.
After months of public support for her plight, sentiment toward Martin had begun to turn against her after repeated media reports in which she cried and chronically complained about what she perceived as the Canadian government's lack of effort on her behalf.
When a Journal reporter visited with Martin for the last time in prison in Guadalajara on Sunday, he told her she might feel differently about what Canada had done for her once she returned home.
"She told me she dreamt last night about coming home and how good it would feel and how grateful she would be and she said it all came true," Tieleman said.
Tieleman said Martin's handcuffs were removed after she was aboard the jet and officials were extremely kind, offering her coffee and fresh fruit on the trip home.
"Brenda said they could not have been nicer to her and she really appreciated that after all the stress she has been under," Tieleman said.
Martin's mother, Marjorie Bletcher, was relieved to hear her daughter was coming home. "I was not going to feel safe for her until she got on that plane because I did not know what was going to happen with the Mexican government."
Tieleman said she learned of Martin's release this morning from one of Martin's fellow inmates. Martin gave the woman a phone card and asked her to phone Tieleman.
"I am so glad it is over," Tieleman said. "All of her supporters set out nearly two years ago to get her home. It has been a very long battle and she is finally home. I am glad it is over for Brenda, for her mother, and for her supporters."
Tieleman has been told Martin will spend between one and three weeks at the prison before she is released into the care of her mother in Trenton, Ont.
Martin's return to Canada represents what must be the fastest prisoner transfer in Canadian history, Tieleman said. She credited the intensive work in recent months of Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, who took over the file from his colleague Helena Guergis.
Both Tieleman and Liberal consular services critic Dan McTeague had publicly criticized Guergis for dropping the ball on Martin's case. McTeague raised Martin's case several times in the House of Commons, forcing the government at one point to send a diplomatic note to Mexico about Martin's treatment.
Tieleman also praised Kenney for gaining the co-operation of Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, a strong law and order advocate who has a history of refusing prisoner transfers. Day signed off on the transfer.
Tieleman said Martin will receive treatment for an addiction to tranquilizers she developed during her imprisonment in the Puente Grande Women's Prison outside Guadalajara, Mexico. Martin has also been mentally unstable and suicidal and is expected to receive psychological counselling during her brief stay in prison.
Mexican federal police arrested Martin, now 51, on Feb. 17, 2006, nearly five years after they arrested her employer, former Edmonton resident Alyn Waage. Although Martin had worked as a chef for Waage, prosecutors claimed she knew he was operating a massive Internet-based fraud from his Puerto Vallarta mansion.
Martin has maintained she knew nothing of the scheme, a claim supported by Waage in a sworn affidavit. The judge in her case, however, rejected her entire defence and accepted all the arguments advanced by the prosecution.
Martin's lawyer, Guillermo Cruz Rico, has said the judge's ruling defied all the evidence and he found the entire court process in his home country "very disturbing." Martin chose not to appeal the verdict because it would extend her incarceration by three to six months.
Desperate to be released from the Mexican prison, Martin on Tuesday evening signed Correctional Services Canada documents in which she agreed to a five-year sentence for the Canadian charge of money laundering, even though she still strongly maintains her innocence.
Martin signed the documents on the advice of her Canadian criminal defence lawyer who told her she would be immediately eligible for parole because she had already served more than a third of her sentence.
Before her release, Martin must first appear before a parole board panel to make her case for release, but that is expected to be a formality.
Last week, a Mexican judge found Martin guilty of knowingly accepting illicit funds and sentenced her to five years in prison. Canadian officials immediately set in motion a plan to have her transferred to Canada as soon as possible.
In order to grant the transfer, Mexican officials had to be assured that Canada would assign a similar charge and sentence to her case. Martin believes Canadian authorities chose to assign a five-year sentence here to assure Mexican approval of the transfer.
Bletcher said she has already been visited by a parole officer, who did an assessment of her house and the support Martin will receive in Trenton.
"She was very nice and gave me a hug when she left so I guess everything will be all right," said Bletcher, who turns 70 next month.
Bletcher said she has saved dozens of newspaper clippings and television stations have sent her copies of the stories they produced about her daughter.
"These are things she can look at to see how many people were trying to help her so she can start being more thankful and getting on with her life."
crusnell(at)thejournal.canwest.com |
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