oped...And zero credit goes to the Obama administration and MSM ... kudos to 'We the People' and Fox News who took it upon themselves to fight the good fight.. Enjoy your Freedom and have a cold beer & bbq Andrew:)
TIJUANA
— A Mexican federal district judge in Tijuana on Friday ordered the
immediate release of a U.S. Marine veteran behind bars in Baja
California on federal weapons charges.
Andrew
Tahmooressi was on trial for crossing the border with ammunition and
three loaded weapon on March 31. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office
agreed to cease its prosecution of Tahmooressi and allow him to return
to the United States.
The
agreement brings to a close a high-profile case that has resounded far
beyond the border. In the United States, it has prompted calls for his
release from politicians, veterans groups, conservative talk show hosts.
But for months there had been an impasse, as Mexican federal
prosecutors insisted that the case be resolved through the courts -- not
through diplomatic or political pressure.
Tahmooressi, 26, claims that
he drove into Tijuana by mistake on a Monday night after taking a wrong
turn near the Mexican border in San Ysidro. He recently had moved from
Florida to San Diego, and says that he was driving out of a parking lot,
intending to head north. But instead he drove into the El Chaparral
Port of Entry, where Mexican customs inspectors examined his pickup
truck and found more 400 rounds of ammunition and three loaded firearms:
a .45-caliber pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a 5.56mm assault rifle.
His
release from El Hongo State Penitentiary outside Tecate was ordered by
Judge Victor Octavio Luna Escobedo of the Sixth Federal District Court
in Tijuana. Had Tahmooressi been convicted, he would have faced from
seven to 21 years behind bars.
The judge declined to comment, saying any statements would come from Mexico’s Federal Judicial Council. A statement
from the council said that the judge ordered dismissal of the charges
on petition of federal prosecutors and ordered his “immediate and
absolute liberty.”
According
to one Mexican official familiar with the case, the grounds for the
dismissal were that he is unfit to stand trial because he suffers from
post-traumatic stress disorder.
U.S. Rep. Ed Royce,
R-Fullerton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which held
a hearing last month on the case, called Tahmooressi's release great,
but overdue, news.
"I am
pleased that both Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam and the judge on
the case recognize that Sgt. Tahmooressi did not intend to violate
Mexican law, and that his combat-related PTSD should be treated by
specialists in the United States," he said in a statement.
Even
though the U.S. State Department reports that dozens of U.S. citizens
are arrested each month for violating Mexico’s gun laws, few if any
cases have gotten such wide attention.
Tahmooressi’s
situation initially elicited little public sympathy in Mexico, where
there is no constitutional right to bear arms. A headline last May in
the Tijuana newsweekly, Zeta read: "He did not enter Mexico in error."
But his detention did strike a nerve with some sectors in the United
States intent on seeing him released.
Portraying Tahmooressi as a U.S. war hero unjustly detained in a foreign
country, they invoked his military service — two tours of duty in
Afghanistan with the U.S. Marines, with an honorable discharge in 2012,
and stressed that Tahmooressi needed to return to the United States for
treatment. Shortly before his arrest he had been diagnosed with PTSD and
started treatment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla.
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