Renton woman freed after being imprisoned for years by ‘corrupt establishment’

A Renton woman who was imprisoned in Mexico for nearly three years is now free.

Mexican authorities dropped all charges against Nestora Salgado and released her Friday morning.

Salgado had been living in Renton for decades before she moved back to her hometown of Olinala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. She quickly rose to a leadership position in a legal community police force, fighting against government corruption and violence by drug traffickers.

Attorney Thomas Antkowiak says that’s what landed her in jail.

“Mexico criminalizes activists that they find threatening,” he explained. “And the corrupt establishment in Guerrero found her very threatening, so quickly found a way to put her behind bars.”

Salgado was at first charged with kidnapping and, later, murder. Antkowiak worked on her case as director of the Seattle University International Human Rights Clinic. He says the move by Mexican authorities to drop all charges against Salgado is one more sign they were false.

That’s on top of a ruling from a United Nations panel last month. Antkowiak’s clinic brought her case before a United Nations committee, which deemed Salgado’s detention unlawful.

Antkowiak and members of the “U.S. Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado” credit the outpouring of public support, combined with the recent United Nations ruling, for motivating Mexican authorities to release Salgado. Congressman Adam Smith is among those lawmakers. He threw his support behind Salgado last summer, saying he had no doubt about her innocence.

“It is incontrovertible that Nestora was acting within the law doing law enforcement as an independent civilian within Mexican law,” he said. “That’s not even debatable.”

Salgado’s husband and three daughters have been fighting for her release from Seattle. Salgado may be back within a few days, where Antkowiak says she will continue to fight on behalf of her fellow activists, who, he says, are still wrongly imprisoned in Mexico.

On March 26 the Free Nestora campaign will hold a rally in front of Seattle’s Mexican Consulate, both to demand their release and to celebrate Salgado’s return.