Mexico Protests Execution Date For Its Citizen in Oklahoma

Mexican President Vicente Fox has urged the United States to halt the execution of Osvaldo Torres, a Mexican foreign national who is scheduled to die in Oklahoma on May 18th. Oklahoma set the execution date despite a 2003 ruling by the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, that called for staying Torres’s execution and the execution of two other foreign nationals in Texas until the Court could further review the case. The allegation before the world court is that Torres and more than 50 other Mexican prisoners in the U.S. have been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death without notice of their opportunity to seek aid from the consulate, as required under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Oklahoma's Attorney General had also requested that an execution date not be set. Geronimo Gutierrez, the Mexican foreign ministry’s undersecretary for U.S. affairs, noted that Oklahoma’s decision to set a date for Torres upset Mexico and its President, who opposes capital punishment in all circumstances. “This for us is a deliberate violation of the provisional measures that the International Court of Justice dictated,” said Gutierrez. In 2002, Fox abruptly cancelled a meeting with Bush after Texas executed a Mexican foreign national. (Reuters, March 2, 2004) See Foreign Nationals.