Former Mexican Justice Arrested Former Mexican Justice Arrested The Associated Press Friday, June 22, 2001; 3:05 a.m. EDT MEXICO CITY -- A former justice of Mexico's Supreme Court has been jailed on charges of bribery after years as a fugitive in the United States. Arraigned on Wednesday, Ernesto Diaz Infante repeated a plea of innocent that he had entered in 1993 and was ordered held without bail at Mexico City's Northern Prison. Diaz Infante was arrested Tuesday in San Antonio, Texas, and was turned over to Mexican authorities. Because he was in the United States illegally, no extradition process was necessary. The federal attorney general's office has accused him of taking 500,000 in $1988 to pressure lower court judges into freeing a convicted kidnapper, child abuser and murderer, Alejandro Braun Diaz, known as "the jackal of Acapulco." Braun, the son of a wealthy Acapulco businessman, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the 1986 rape and murder of 6-year-old Merle Yuridia Mondain Segura. Two of three appellate judges in Guerrero state ruled two years later in favor of setting Braun free. The two judges were later convicted of accepting bribes and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Braun remains at large and is still wanted, the attorney general's office sa= id. The attorney accused of offering the bribes, Enrique Fuentes Leon, was arrested in San Antonio and extradited in 1995. The newspaper Reforma reported Thursday that the former justice accidentally prompted his own arrest when he had attorneys file a motion seeking to have charges dismissed under the statute of limitations. The judge in the case, Reforma reported, gave prosecutors five more days and they used that to make a frantic last-ditch search for Diaz Infante via Interpol, the international police agency. Reforma said Diaz Infante ran a small computer business from his house in San Antonio. A current justice, Juventino Castro y Castro, told reporters that the case was "painful," but defended the honesty of the current court - whose operations were reformed about six years ago. "The truth is that this is an event from the past and we are very sure it will not occur in the present," he said. Copyright 2001 The Associated Press MEXICO CITY -- A former justice of Mexico's Supreme Court has been jailed on charges of bribery after years as a fugitive in the United States. Arraigned on Wednesday, Ernesto Diaz Infante repeated a plea of innocent that he had entered in 1993 and was ordered held without bail at Mexico City's Northern Prison. Diaz Infante was arrested Tuesday in San Antonio, Texas, and was turned over to Mexican authorities. Because he was in the United States illegally, no extradition process was necessary. The federal attorney general's office has accused him of taking 500,000 in $1988 to pressure lower court judges into freeing a convicted kidnapper, child abuser and murderer, Alejandro Braun Diaz, known as "the jackal of Acapulco." Braun, the son of a wealthy Acapulco businessman, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the 1986 rape and murder of 6-year-old Merle Yuridia Mondain Segura. Two of three appellate judges in Guerrero state ruled two years later in favor of setting Braun free. The two judges were later convicted of accepting bribes and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Braun remains at large and is still wanted, the attorney general's office sa= id. The attorney accused of offering the bribes, Enrique Fuentes Leon, was arrested in San Antonio and extradited in 1995. The newspaper Reforma reported Thursday that the former justice accidentally prompted his own arrest when he had attorneys file a motion seeking to have charges dismissed under the statute of limitations. The judge in the case, Reforma reported, gave prosecutors five more days and they used that to make a frantic last-ditch search for Diaz Infante via Interpol, the international police agency. Reforma said Diaz Infante ran a small computer business from his house in San Antonio. A current justice, Juventino Castro y Castro, told reporters that the case was "painful," but defended the honesty of the current court - whose operations were reformed about six years ago. "The truth is that this is an event from the past and we are very sure it will not occur in the present," he said. Copyright 2001 The Associated Press ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.22.01-18:28:59-9087