In March 2006, six plainclothes agents of

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Federal Investigations Agency The Federal Ministerial Police (in Spanish: ''Policía Federal Ministerial'', PFM) is a Mexican federal agency tasked with fighting corruption and organized crime, through an executive order by President Felipe Calderón. The agency is directe ...

(AFI) raided a market in Santiago Mexquititlán,

Querétaro Querétaro (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Querétaro ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Querétaro, links=no; Otomi language, Otomi: ''Hyodi Ndämxei''), is one of the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. I ...

, in search of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. The agents later alleged that they were held hostage by vendors during the raid. Three women were convicted of the alleged kidnapping. In September 2009, Jacinta Francisco Marcial and in April 2010 Alberta Alcántara and Teresa González, were released from prison after the charges against them were dropped.

Allegations of kidnapping

During the raid, the six AFI agents were cornered by a number of unarmed vendors in protest. The agents later claimed that the vendors demanded a ransom to let them go. Local witnesses to the incident denied any ransom demand was made.

Jacinta Francisco Marcial

Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an indigenous Otomí woman, sold ice cream in Santiago Mexquititlán's predominantly indigenous

tianguis A is an open-air market or bazaar that is traditionally held on certain market days in a town or city neighborhood in Mexico and Central America. This bazaar tradition has its roots well into the pre-Hispanic period and continues in many cases e ...

. The six AFI agents who conducted the raid implicated Francisco Marcial after they were shown a newspaper photograph depicting her walking near a group of protesting vendors. In August 2006, four months after the raid, she was arrested for the alleged kidnapping. She was later convicted and sentenced to twenty-one years' imprisonment.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

denounced Francisco Marcial's imprisonment as resulting from a

wrongful prosecution A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. In ...

. The group declared her a prisoner of conscience, claiming there was no credible evidence against her, and that she had been prosecuted because of her gender, poverty, race, and inability to speak or understand the Spanish language. In 2009, prosecutors dropped the case against Francisco Marcial. In September 2009, she was released. In April 2010 the

Mexican Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation ( es, Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) is the Mexican institution serving as the country's federal high court and the spearhead organisation for the judiciary of the Mexican Federal Go ...

unanimously agreed to reverse the convictions of the two other women convicted of the same charges, Alberta Alcántara and Teresa González, and they were released from prison.

References

Copyright enforcement Law enforcement in Mexico Mexican intellectual property law 2006 in Mexico Wrongful convictions {{LatAm-law-stub