State Officials in Guerrero Mexico Imprison US Citizen Who Fought Corruption Rachael Stoeve - Truthout
go to original September 19, 2013

"Every time there is someone who raises their voice against corruption, they either end up dead or in jail," Grisel Rodriguez says. We are sitting in a café in Seattle, and she is telling me about her mother, Nestora Salgado, a US citizen imprisoned in Mexico. Salgado is a coordinator of the community police in Olinala, a town in the Mexican state of Guerrero. She was arrested on August 21, 2013, and according to news releases from the Guerrero state government, she is charged with aggravated kidnapping.

However, according to Rodriguez, these charges are false. She says Salgado's arrest is retaliation for her public denouncements of local and state officials who are taking money from organized crime. The arrest came after Salgado's refusal to free a local official, Armando Patron, who was arrested by the community police after he was caught tampering with evidence of a double homicide and stealing property from the victims. In the days before her arrest, Salgado received death threats and was harassed at her home by the military.

The governor of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre, initially supported the community police, but that changed after Salgado challenged corruption. "That's when she became so dangerous to them - she was showing all of Mexico how corrupt these people were," Rodriguez said. "At this point, she's a political prisoner."

Read the rest at Truthout

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