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Friday, October 31, 2014

Sgt Andrew Tahmooressi released from Mexican Prison..!

Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi told Greta Van Susteren he had been beaten and ...
... Thurs. After 300-Mile Trek For Release Of Marine In Mexican Prison
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:)  

By Sandra Dibble 

— 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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