Mexican justices reject bid to free convicted French kidnapper

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REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- A panel of Supreme Court justices declined Wednesday to free a French woman jailed for kidnapping, even though several judges agreed that authorities probably violated her rights by staging a replay of her arrest for television cameras in 2005.

The case against Florence Cassez, who is serving a 60-year term, has for years been a thorn in relations between Mexico and France and a recurrent source of debate in Mexico, which is battling a kidnapping scourge.

Justice Arturo Zaldivar proposed to a five-member “first chamber” that irregularities in the government’s handling of the case, in particular the televised replay of Cassez’s arrest by federal police a day after she was taken into custody, were serious enough to warrant her immediate release.

Cassez, now 37, was convicted with her boyfriend of being part of a kidnapping ring called the Zodiacs. Her original 96-year sentence was later reduced. Zaldivar’s colleagues refused to free Cassez, though four judges agreed her rights had been violated her during arrest and the early phase of the investigation.

The case, which highlighted lapses in Mexico’s legal system alongside anxieties over crime, appeared likely to be handed to one of the other justices to pave the way for a fresh review, possibly by the same group of justices.

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-- Ken Ellingwood