Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 17, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Mexico, Bishop Jose Guadalupe Martin Rabago of Leon, has called on the Mexican government for “life without parole” for kidnappers.
Mexico does not allow the death penalty, and therefore the bishop indicated that “the most severe sentence that can be handed down for kidnapping is life in prison.”
In response to the wave of kidnappings that has swept across Mexico, Bishop Martin Rabago commented that for “such a grave attack against someone as depriving him or her of liberty, there must be tough justice that punishes these kinds of offenses, so that in some way the tendency to obtain easy money is hindered.”
He added that the bishops consider it more important that the structural causes that provoke kidnapping be determined, and thus the bishops of western Mexico decided against excommunicating kidnappers and instead opted for appealing to the government for tougher prison sentences in order to deter such crimes.