Vet Marine Unjustly Imprisoned in Mexico Might Be Released This Friday

UPDATE!!  HE’S FREE!!!!

From the Brownsville Herald:

The vice president of the Tamaulipas Chamber of Commerce has confirmed that U.S Marine Jon Hammar is in the custody of U.S. officials.

“He’s free,” Gerardo Danache Acevedo told The Brownsville Herald this afternoon.

It is unclear at what time Hammar will be released, but it will be sometime today.

Acevedo Danache said he had been informed that a judge has signed Hammar’s release papers from jail and that he is expected to be escorted out of Matamoros sometime today.

Acevedo Danache earlier this month made a telephone call to Mexican President Enrique Nieto Pena asking him to pardon the veteran Marine.

“I really, really believe the media played a big role in this. I am happy that this will happen because there is no reason we should continue with this” Acevedo Danache said in a telephone interview with The Brownsville Herald.

For those celebrating his release, please keep in mind that there were people in Mexico who also fought with us to have him released. And to everyone who helped spread this story, great job!!

Tweet this update!

~ ~ ~

This is great news. If you haven’t been following the harrowing story of Veteran Marine John Hammar, please listen to the summary as explained by John and Ken, two talk radio hosts from KFI in Los Angeles:

Here’s another from Military.com:

Hammar was arrested in August on the Mexican side of the Free Trade Bridge at Los Indios on a weapons charge; he has been jailed in Matamoros since. Family members and an attorney say Hammar tried to declare an antique .410 shotgun with Mexican customs, as his family has said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials told him he could.

When Hammar entered Matamoros, he was planning to go to Costa Rica with a friend to surf.

As reported by KFI, Hammar’s mother says that anonymous Mexican officials have told her that he might be released this Friday. However, Jon’s mother sounds very uneasy about the information she received about his full acquittal. In the interview, she says that the Mexican authorities are upset at the attention they’re receiving about this terrible injustice.

One of the institutions she mentions is the Mexican Commission on Human Rights, which has done a lot to highlight human rights abuses in Mexico, and I’m hoping that a twitter campaign to pressure them might help:

 

After you retweet the above, or send your own tweet to the commission, please take the time to write them an email as well:

correo@cndh.org.mx

Another account that it would be good to pummel is Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s twitter:

Finally, let the Mexican Ambassador to the United States know that you’re demanding Jon Hammar be set free:

Join the “Free Jon Hammar” Facebook page here. And just for fun:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at 7:27 amand is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.