Politics

Paris –  Tensions have surfaced between Mexico and France after a Mexican court rejected an appeal filed by a Frenchwoman who is serving a 60-year sentence for kidnapping.

Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Friday summoned Mexican Ambassador to France Carlos de Icaza to express her country's displeasure with the ruling and to inform him that it "will have an impact on bilateral relations."

Paris responded after a Mexican appellate court on Thursday rejected a habeas corpus motion filed by Florence Cassez's defense team, which denounced numerous irregularities in her case.

Cassez, now 36, was arrested on Dec. 8, 2005, on the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway along with her boyfriend, Israel Vallarta, the suspected leader of the Los Zodiaco kidnapping gang.

A day later, agents from the now-defunct AFI, Mexico's equivalent of the FBI, staged a mock raid so TV cameras could film the arrest of the gang members in a wooded area near Mexico City.

"For that re-enactment alone, the entire proceedings should be rendered void," the Frenchwoman's father, Bernard Cassez, said.

The convicted kidnapper, who has proclaimed her innocence from the beginning, is upset but "determined to keep fighting," according to her father, who blasted Mexico as "a country that doesn't respect human rights nor its own constitution."

Cassez's family has called for a tourist boycott of Mexico and for the cancellation of a series of activities this year in France to celebrate Mexican culture.

Alliot-Marie has been first to back that initiative, saying that she will not participate in any of the scheduled "Year of Mexico" events.

The foreign minister said Cassez did not receive a fair trial due to a lack of a "presumption of innocence" and the "absence of an authentic investigation."

The minister's remarks heaped further pressure on Mexico in a case in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year interceded on Cassez's behalf with Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon.

Parties across France's political spectrum were united in denouncing the latest ruling in Cassez's case, while the Mexican Embassy in France on Friday urged respect for the independence of the country's courts and their decisions.

"The federal government respects the decisions made by the courts. The rule of law that underpins every democracy rests on the principle of the separation of powers," Ambassador De Icaza said after meeting with Alliot-Marie.

Mexico is experiencing a wave of violence attributed mainly to turf battles among rival drug cartels, as well as to kidnapping gangs and people smugglers.

A spiral of abductions, several involving the offspring of prominent businessmen, brought hundreds of thousands of citizens onto the streets in 2008 to demand that authorities crack down on the kidnapping gangs.

Last October, the Mexican Congress approved a bill that stiffens the penalties for kidnappers from 25 to 45 years behind bars when the victims are mutilated or if the criminals are retired or active-duty police officers, and from 40 to 70 years in prison if the victims are killed.

Chihuahua, the country's most violent state, approved a law to punish kidnappers with up to life in prison and since last December two people have received that sentence upon conviction.

A record 209 kidnap victims were murdered last year in Mexico, double the number in 2009, the Movimiento Blanco, a coalition of civic groups concerned about crime, said earlier this month.

"The unprecedented magnitude of ... murdered kidnap victims (is) incontrovertible evidence of the complete failure of the government strategy against kidnapping," the coalition said.