Malaysia pardons 3 brothers on death row
The sultan of the southern Malaysian state of Johor has commuted the
death sentences of three Mexican brothers who were set to be hanged for
drug trafficking crimes, Mexico said.
After years of lobbying by Mexican diplomats, Sultan Ibrahim Sultan
Iskandar of Johor -- one of Malaysia's most powerful and wealthiest
state rulers -- commuted the men's death sentences to life in prison,
Mexico's foreign ministry said Thursday.
"This was the result of a long process and intense dialogue with Malaysian federal authorities," it said in a statement.
The brothers -- Simon, Luis Alfonso and Jose Regino Gonzalez
Villarreal -- were arrested in a raid on a methamphetamine lab in Johor
in March 2008.
The brothers, who hail from the Mexican state of Sinaloa -- home to
jailed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel -- insisted
they were innocent, saying they had been hired to clean the building and
were unaware what was being made inside.
But a Malaysian court sentenced them to hang to death in May 2012. The conviction was upheld on appeal the following year.
Mexico, which does not use capital punishment, neither accepted nor
rejected the court's guilty verdict, but pushed for the death sentence
to be commuted. ABS-CBN News 22/9/2018
