Mexican President Vicente Fox has urged the United States to halt the exe­cu­tion of Osvaldo Torres, a Mexican for­eign nation­al who is sched­uled to die in Oklahoma on May 18th. Oklahoma set the exe­cu­tion date despite a 2003 rul­ing by the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, that called for stay­ing Torres’s exe­cu­tion and the exe­cu­tion of two oth­er for­eign nation­als in Texas until the Court could fur­ther review the case. The alle­ga­tion before the world court is that Torres and more than 50 oth­er Mexican pris­on­ers in the U.S. have been arrest­ed, tried, and sen­tenced to death with­out notice of their oppor­tu­ni­ty to seek aid from the con­sulate, as required under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Oklahoma’s Attorney General had also request­ed that an exe­cu­tion date not be set. Geronimo Gutierrez, the Mexican for­eign ministry’s under­sec­re­tary for U.S. affairs, not­ed that Oklahoma’s deci­sion to set a date for Torres upset Mexico and its President, who oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in all cir­cum­stances. ​“This for us is a delib­er­ate vio­la­tion of the pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures that the International Court of Justice dic­tat­ed,” said Gutierrez. In 2002, Fox abrupt­ly can­celled a meet­ing with Bush after Texas exe­cut­ed a Mexican for­eign nation­al. (Reuters, March 2, 2004) See Foreign Nationals.

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