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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Canadian writes of Mexican 'torture'
Charged in plot to smuggle Gadhafi son
CHARGES have been formally laid against a Canadian woman who has been in a Mexican prison for more than 80 days over allegations she led a plot to smuggle a son of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi into Mexico.
Mexican officials confirmed Wednesday Cynthia Vanier, 52, and four others were charged with attempted immigrant trafficking, falsifying documents and participation in organized crime.
The plan to sneak out Saadi Gadhafi involved stolen passports, white-knuckle flights with pilots who refused to land in war-torn Libya and luxury homes bought under false names, assistant attorney general Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas said. Authorities allege Vanier was the ringleader and had a false Mexican passport and birth certificate in her name when she was arrested.
The suspects were formally charged last week. They have not entered pleas.
Early Wednesday, a letter was released wherein Vanier details abuses she says she's suffered in the weeks since she was arrested.
She's suffered "physical abuse and torture by international definitions based on the Vienna Convention," she wrote in the letter obtained by the CBC.
Vanier, from Mount Forest, Ont., said she was accused of being a terrorist and denied access to Canadian consular officials or a lawyer.
Vanier was in Libya in July to assess the security situation for engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
On her first night under arrest, Vanier said, she was being driven from one building to another when she noticed her friend accompanied by a lawyer.
"I tried to yell out the open window," she wrote. "As I did, one of the female officers struck me with her elbow on the lower right side over the kidney. I could hardly breathe, it hurt so much."
Vanier wrote she was then thrown in a "cement hole."
"I had not had anything to eat or drink and was given nothing. I was in a lot of pain and when they finally let me use the washroom, I was bleeding when I urinated," Vanier wrote. "I thought I was going to die in there."
In December, Gary Peters, director of Can/Aust Security & Investigations International Inc., said he had worked as Saadi Gadhafi's North America security chief in Canada, and Vanier had been involved in efforts to get him into Mexico. Vanier was to get travel documents, but the arrangements were legitimate, as far as Peters knew, he said.
John Babcock, spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Diane Ablonczy, said they received the letter but haven't verified Vanier's allegations.
-- Postmedia News, with files from The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 2, 2012 A8
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