The president's statement immediately provoked backlash because it was based on a misunderstanding of what had taken place. He then asked rhetorically: "How is a person going to be detained without a sentence?" agents operating Mexico.ĭuring his morning press conference this week, President López Obrador said that Caro Quintero’s appeal “proceeded legally” because he had never stood trial and that is why he was freed. López Obrador has shifted priorities in his approach, and recently protected a key military official accused of drug-trafficking in the United States, and also created new restrictions for U.S. The President’s remark is likely to prove a new irritant in the already strained relationship with the United States over security issues. Experts say that there are over 90,000 prisoners in Mexico who have yet to stand trial. López Obrador made the comment as he discussed the case of an alleged kidnapper who had been held in prison without a trial for nearly 15 years, which he compared to Caro Quintero’s case. government, which expected to seek his extradition once he finished serving time in Mexico. News of the release in 2013 came as a surprise to both Mexican authorities, and the U.S. But in 2013, an appeals court overturned the sentence claiming that the case should have been overseen by a state court, rather than a federal one, and ordered the immediate release of the kingpin. Truly, the BBC is a remarkable organisation.Caro Quintero spent 27 years behind bars in Mexico for his role in the 1985 murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. All that said, it is impossible to imagine any other media company ever washing such dirty linen in public. Though much of the initial attention has been paid to the fact that much of Pollard's interview with Newsnight's presenter, Jeremy Paxman, was redacted, it is interesting to note that he thought Jones to be "reliable".ĭoubtless some BBC hands would rather than had been redacted too. Pollard referred to an email she later sent about this clash between the two, saying: "It paints a pretty terrible picture of what was going on in your empire, shall we say?"īoaden admitted: "It does." And then she referred to her email, which said: "It seems to me this basically comes down to two boys fighting for control of a complex and complicated story." She cast the failure of Newsnight to screen the Savile investigation in terms of differences of opinion between the programme's editor, Peter Rippon, and the producer of the story, Meirion Jones. Most notably, Helen Boaden, the soon to be ex-BBC News director, was scathing about the Newsnight team, regarding them as forming "an old colonial power". I mean, in this case, you have a director general, a head of news … somebody responsible for current affairs and an experienced editor … things still get horribly screwed up."Įchoing Patten, senior BBC staff also appear to have gone in for some buck-passing. He then spread his criticism still further across the corporation's staff by saying of the BBC's investigative journalists that they had "qualities which mean that their strike rate of accuracy is not as great as one might like".Īsked by Pollard if the absence of a deputy director general had hampered the BBC's handling of the Savile crisis, Patten replied: "I don't think that the BBC needs more senior people in order to avoid making basic mistakes. He also lashed into the BBC's corporate PR team, calling it "chaotic". Though he was "saying all the right things" about reforming management in the first 11 days of his 54-day reign, Patten said things began to unravel once the Savile scandal erupted. In talking of the weak executive team around his choice of director general, Patten said sarcastically that George Entwistle "talked a good game" about reducing the number of senior managers. And so, looking at the transcript of his own interview during the Pollard review, it has come to pass.įor, in the transcripts, Patten emerges as someone prepared to dump all over senior BBC managers, including the two former director generals, Mark Thompson and George Entwistle, the man he had described just four months previously as having "the ability to give leadership to a great creative organisation". He was surely aware that the required disclosures would leave him red-faced, too. It is true that he had previously made the same promise to MPs, but it is fair now – in the light of what emerged from the Pollard inquiry transcripts on Friday – to wonder if he was hoping to avoid the embarrassment of further revelations about the BBC's botched handling of the Savile affair. Patten betrayed unusual tetchiness when replying, this time unequivocally, to say it would be done.
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