When
you travel abroad, if you happen to get in trouble you have the right
to contact your Embassy or Consulate. And thanks to an important
treaty,
the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, anyone
who arrests you is required to inform you of that right.
When José Medellín, a Mexican national, was arrested in Texas, no one
informed him of that right. He is scheduled to be executed on August 5.
Act
now to uphold U.S. treaty commitments by preventing the execution of
José Medellín.
In 2004, the World Court ruled that prisoners like José Medellín must
be provided with an adequate review to determine if their cases were
jeopardized by the denial of their consular notification rights. No
such review has taken place in Medellin's case.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General Michael
Mukasey have called on Texas to make such a review happen, and both the
U.S. Supreme Court and even Texas officials have acknowledged that the
World Court ruling is "an international law obligation." There is also
now a bill in Congress that would address the problem, but it won't
pass before José Medellín's August 5 execution date.
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