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 News from Around the Americas | March 2008 
MPs' Visit to Imprisoned Woman Slammed as 'Photo Op'
 BYLINE
| | Two Conservative MPs are to visit Canadian Brenda Martin in a Mexican prison today. | | |
A trip by two Conservative MPs to Mexico to visit a Canadian woman who's been imprisoned without trial for two years is being slammed by her supporters as manipulative and cynical political grandstanding.
"This is absolutely disgusting," said Deb Tieleman, a childhood friend of Brenda Martin who has led the campaign to win the release of the 51-year-old Trenton, Ont., native.
"You would have thought that the Conservative government would have the common decency and empathy not to send them down there for a photo opportunity."
Tieleman was responding to news that the mandate of Jason Kenney and Rick Norlock was not to gain Martin's release, but simply to ensure her legal and health rights are being observed by Mexico.
The MPs were accompanied on the trip Tuesday by a CTV television reporter.
Martin, who has previously been on a 24-hour suicide watch, is desperate to be freed from the women's prison in Guadalajara.
Martin was employed as a chef for former Alberta resident Alyn Richard Waage in Puerto Vallarta for 10 months in 2001.
Waage was operating an Internet fraud scheme at the time although he pretended to be an investor.
He was eventually arrested and is serving a 10-year sentence in a U.S. jail.
Five years after Waage's arrest, Martin was charged with money laundering and being part of a criminal conspiracy.
Although Waage has provided a sworn affidavit stating Martin had no involvement or knowledge of his operations, she has remained in jail since Feb. 17, 2006.
Norlock is the MP for Northumberland Quinte West, which includes Trenton.
When he was approached by a Canwest News Service reporter in February 2007 for the first story about Martin's imprisonment, he told the reporter he had reviewed her file and said she belonged in prison.
He then abruptly hung up and did not return subsequent calls. Norlock was on his way to Mexico Tuesday morning and could not be reached for comment.
His executive assistant, Tom Rittwage, insisted that Norlock has been concerned about Martin and has been working diligently on her case "since Day 1."
Rittwage said the trip is not a photo opportunity.
"This is no different than what we have been doing all along," he said. "This is a path we have been following since January 2007. Rick Norlock has been doing everything that he can do on this."
Martin's mother, Marjorie Bletcher, said that had Norlock called her before he went on the trip, she would have told him not to go because Brenda Martin does not want to see him.
"He wouldn't even return my phone calls and he was rude to me when he finally did," Bletcher said. "He has done nothing and now the only reason he is going down there is to try save his job."
"They better not be just grandstanding. That is my daughter's life and if they make her worse and she dies, her blood is on their hands," Bletcher said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised Martin's case with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Canada has also sent Mexico a diplomatic note urging that her case be speedily resolved.
But Notimex, Mexico's government financed news agency, ignored the growing international furor over Martin, portraying Harper's call as an opportunity to ensure Calderon that temporary Mexican workers would be treated properly in Canada.
crusnell(at)thejournal.canwest.com |
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