■MEXICO
French appeal rejected
President Felipe Calderon said on Monday that a Frenchwoman convicted of kidnapping will have to serve her 60-year sentence in Mexico, rejecting appeals by France to send her home. Calderon said his government decided against returning Florence Cassez because France wouldn’t guarantee that she would serve the full sentence. “The French government said it was reserving the right to suspend, reduce or decide how to implement the sentence,” Calderon said. “That’s unacceptable to Mexico.” Cassez has acknowledged she lived at a ranch near Mexico City where three kidnap victims were held, including an eight-year-old girl. But she said she was simply dating a Mexican arrested in the case and did not know the people at the ranch had been kidnapped. One of the victims, however, identified Cassez as one of her captors, and another suspect in the case said that the Frenchwoman not only participated in abductions, but helped lead the gang that carried them out.
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