Friday 19 April 2013

Gabriela de Cueto on US soil as Cynthia Vanier awaits deportation

Gabby de Cueto
At approximately 4:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, April 19, Gabriela (Gabby) de Cueto, the Mexican-American woman detained for 18 months in Mexico for having allegedly plotted to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi to Mexico, entered US airspace.

By 10:30 p.m. La politica had heard that Ms. de Cueto, who does not have US citizenship but who calls San Diego home, had arrived at a secure location State-side.

La politica had been hearing for over a week that Ms. de Cueto and her co-accused, the Canadian Cynthia Vanier, were to be released from their prison cells in Chetumal, Mexico. That happened just before dawn on Friday, April 19.

However, the narratives surrounding the circumstances of the releases were divergent.

Information from sources close to Vanier supported the widely reported version of events: that Ms. Vanier’s appeal regarding the circumstances of her arrest and flimsy evidence would receive a favourable review by Mexico’s Supreme Court.  That happened, and Ms.Vanier was released without the Court Tribunal finding a determination of guilt or innocence.

However, the information given to La politica suggested that Vanier was on an independent legal course which would have no effect on Ms. de Cueto or the Danish national Pierre Flensborg, who was being held in a prison in Toluca on similar charges.

In fact, La politica was receiving contradictory information from sources close to de Cueto suggesting that she was about to be released, and that Vanier would remain in prison. News on the fate of Mr. Flensborg was at times uncertain. Now, it turns out that he is to be deported to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Sunday.

The fate of the fourth accused, the Mexican Jose Luis Kennedy Prieto, is unknown.

After being released from jail Ms. Vanier was transferred to an immigration detention centre in order to be formally deported. News reports have stated that she will be home within 24 hours.

(Now that Vanier has been released and returned to Canada, could she be charged? See: Cynthia Vanier: linking up the emails in the Mexican evidence and the RCMP search warrant of SNC-Lavalin’s offices)

(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)




Twitter: @TimothyEWilson
Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com

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