Posts Tagged ‘Veracruz’
Written by admin on 15 February 2010
Veracruz (Mexico), Feb 15 (IANS/EFE) A Catholic priest arrested last year for his alleged participation in a child-pornography ring operating via the Internet has been released due to lack of evidence in the case, a church spokesman said.
Rafael Muniz Lopez, who was assigned to St. Peter Apostle Church in Xalapa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, was released without charges Friday and left the Mexico City jail where he was being held.
A criminal court judge in the federal district ordered Muniz’s immediate release ‘due to insufficient evidence’ that the priest was involved in organised crime, Archdiocese of Xalapa public affairs office director Jose Juan Sanchez Jacome said.
The investigation that led to the priest’s arrest began in March 2009, when Mexico City prosecutors discovered an e-mail containing images of sex acts involving minors.
The federal district prosecutor’s office arrested seven suspects April 17, 2009.
Muniz and his brother, Francisco Javier, were identified as suspected members of the Internet child-pornography ring.
On a web page link included in the e-mail investigators noted ‘scenes of explicit sex between adults and girls and boys from 0 to 10 years old’, the prosecutor’s office had said.
Police tracked the website to Luis Alejandro Vergara, at whose Mexico City home they found a large amount of child pornography.
Vergara, who confessed to rape and sexual abuse, was an employee of Mexico’s foreign relations secretariat.
Information on Vergara’s computer led police to six other individuals in five different Mexican states, including Muniz and his brother.
Francisco Javier Muniz Lopez was released a few days after his arrest.
Five of the other suspects in the case are still being held by authorities.
–IANS/EFE
rd/jg
Tags: Mexico, Veracruz
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Written by admin on 15 January 2010
Veracruz (Mexico) Jan 15 (IANS/EFE) Mexican authorities have denied reports that a prison was cleared for shooting of a Mel Gibson-starrer Hollywood film and said the inmates were transferred due to security reasons.
Inmates were cleared from a prison for security reasons and not to allow US actor Mel Gibson to begin shooting a film at the facility, Veracruz Governor Fidel Herrera said.
‘Whether the Gibson film is made or not, I don’t know, but this issue turned into a national spectacle,’ Herrera said.
The Veracruz government faced criticism for reportedly speeding up the removal of inmates from the Ignacio Allende prison, which housed some 1,000 prisoners, for the shooting of a Gibson’s movie.
The courts were never notified of the decision, meaning that the law was violated, the state’s chief judge, Reynaldo Madruga, said.
Herrera, however, said that a criminal group planned to attack the facility on Jan 9 and behead inmates whose names were on a hit list.
‘The Defense Secretariat, the navy, the prosecutor’s office and the Public Safety Secretariat allowed us, with the cooperation of many of the inmates who appeared on the execution list, to carry out a discreet transfer,’ Herrera said.
Officials decided to speed up the transfer to foil the attack on the prison, which will be replaced by a new facility currently under construction, the governor said.
Earlier, the Hollywood actor filmed his movie ‘Apocalypto’ in Veracruz in 2006.
Tags: Mexico, Veracruz
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Written by admin on 11 January 2010
Veracruz (Mexico), Jan 11 (IANS/EFE) Nearly 300 inmates were removed from a prison in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz over the weekend to allow US actor Mel Gibson to begin shooting a film later this month at the facility, officials said.
Police and soldiers moved the inmates out of the Ignacio Allende prison, located in the port city of Veracruz and housing some 1,000 prisoners.
The security forces closed streets near the prison, which is on one of the main streets in Veracruz, located some 400 km east of Mexico City, so the inmates could be transported to other facilities aboard about a dozen buses.
The operation began shortly before midnight Friday and ended around 3 a.m. Saturday.
Several dozen relatives of prisoners staged a protest, claiming the move would force them to travel a greater distance to visit their loved ones and cost them more money.
The demonstrators confronted the security forces, but the operation was completed successfully.
The inmates transferred in the operation are being held on murder, robbery, drug trafficking, kidnapping and other charges.
The inmates were moved to state prisons in the cities of Acayucan, Coatzacoalcos, Tuxpan, Cosamaloapan, Papantla and San Andres Tuxtla.
A new prison is being built to replace the Ignacio Allende penitentiary, officials said.
Filming for the Gibson project, whose subject is not known, is expected to last several months.
Gibson, one of Hollywood’s biggest names, filmed his 2006 Maya epic ‘Apocalypto’ in Veracruz state.
Tags: Mexico, Veracruz
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Written by admin on 29 December 2009
Veracruz (Mexico), Dec 29 (IANS/EFE) Several hundred people protested outside a prison in the Mexican city of Veracruz – where an upcoming Mel Gibson movie is to be filmed – to demand that a planned transfer of inmates not be moved up to an earlier date.
Close to 300 relatives of inmates at the Ignacio Allende prison blocked access to the penitentiary Monday to block a possible moving-up of a planned prisoner transfer, which initially had been scheduled for January so Gibson could start filming in the first days of 2010.
‘Mel Gibson, it’s your fault they want to take our family away,’ one of the protesters’ signs read.
Others bore the messages ‘Don’t take them away, please. They’re not animals’ and ‘No transfers. Respect for families’.
The demonstrators said authorities were planning to move up the transfer of the 1,000 inmates at the facility to the end-of-year holidays.
Local authorities soon will inaugurate a new prison to replace the current penitentiary, which is located along one of the main avenues in this port city.
But the demonstrators demanded that authorities wait until January to transfer the inmates to the new prison, which will be located a few km from Veracruz port. They say moving them now will mean the prisoners will first have to be taken to penitentiaries far from their places of origin before they are moved to the new facility.
The shooting of Gibson’s new movie, details of which have not been announced, will last several months and be centred on the prison installations, which currently house inmates convicted of crimes ranging from robbery and homicide to drug trafficking and kidnapping.
Gibson, one of Hollywood’s biggest names, filmed his 2006 Maya epic ‘Apocalypto’ in Veracruz state.
Tags: Mexico, Veracruz
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