On December 8, 2005, Mexican authorities investigating a spate of kidnappings arrested a young couple by the side of a highway near the capital. Florence Cassez, a French citizen, and her Mexican boyfriend were taken to a nearby police station and held there. The next morning, the couple was brought to the ranch where they had been staying. As television cameras rolled, police officers reenacted the previous day’s arrest, and three kidnapping victims were escorted from the premises by rescue teams. Viewers around the country were told the raid was being broadcast live; two months later, a police official admitted that the drama at the ranch had been staged, but that “this element will not be taken into account” during the kidnappers’ trials. In April 2008, Cassez was convicted and sentenced to 96 years in prison. On appeal, her sentence was reduced to sixty years – and in 2010, a key witness against her recanted. A three-judge panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday that Cassez’s rights had been violated during the course of her detention and allowed her to return immediately to France.
Rizana Nafeek’s story ends very differently. Nafeek, a Sri Lankan housemaid working in Saudi Arabia, was charged in 2005 with the murder of a baby left in her care. She was seventeen years old at the time, spoke little Arabic, and had no legal counsel at her trial. In June 2007, Nafeek was sentenced to death by beheading; on January 9, 2013, the sentence was carried out, over the objections of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa and in likely violation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2011, Sri Lanka sent a delegation to ask Nafeek’s employers to show clemency, but ill-considered statements from Sri Lankan parliamentarians may have torpedoed the delicate mission. President Rajapaksa then appealed to King Abdullah, asking him to refrain from signing Nafeek’s death warrant. The king ignored the request.
In the weeks since Nafeek’s death, Sri Lanka’s efforts to free her have been criticized as clumsy, halfhearted, and far too late in coming. French diplomats, on the other hand, are congratulating themselves now that eight years of pressure on the Mexican government appear to have paid off. In 2011, a yearlong celebration of France’s relationship with Mexico was nearly canceled after then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he would be “dedicating” the festivities to Cassez. After the loss of Cassez’s second appeal, French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie threatened that an unfavorable resolution of her case would “weigh on our bilateral relations.” France’s willingness to allow the case to influence the direction of its relationship with Mexico is particularly striking in light of the fact that the evidence against Cassez, while not flawless, is relatively strong: two of the three victims rescued during the televised raid identified her as one of their captors. The case against Nafeek in Saudi Arabia was weaker – and yet the Sri Lankan government kept its distance until after she was convicted. According to Migrant Rights, an advocacy group, Nafeek received no consular assistance from officials of her home government in the crucial months following her arrest, when competent legal aid might have made a difference.
The political questions these situations pose have simple answers. France is a powerful country. Sri Lanka is not. France could afford to make things awkward for a few years in order to make a point about how Mexico should treat a French citizen. Sri Lanka could do little more than remind the Saudi authorities of their international legal obligations. The French Foreign Ministry counts more than 2,200 of its citizens in foreign prisons, from Indonesia to Togo, and tries to provide at least minimal consular services to most of them. The United States, Britain, and other rich countries can do likewise. Many smaller nations, of course, can’t.
Cases like Cassez’s are unusual. Stories like Nafeek’s, with its horrifying ending, are, thankfully, also rare, but the extreme political vulnerabilities her case illustrates are, sadly, common.