Although she was sentenced to six years in prison: Mexican woman strangles rapist – and is released

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Mexican woman Roxana Ruiz (23) killed her rapist two years ago with a shirt and her bare hands. She had previously met the man in a bar. That evening he offered to accompany her home and asked if he could stay with her as it was too long to go home. She let him stay with her on a mattress on the floor. In the night he finally attacked her.

The self-defense, in which the mother used excessive force by strangling the man, according to the court, almost cost her her freedom. She should go to jail. Last week, Ruiz was sentenced to six years in prison.

Now the Mexican does not have to go behind bars. As local media report, the prosecutor’s office has now returned and has subsequently dropped the charges against the woman.

“Defending my life is not a crime”

Not without reason: Ruiz’s verdict had caused a stir throughout Mexico. In the foreground, women’s rights organizations are opposed to the court’s ruling. The verdict criminalizes survivors of sexual violence and at the same time protects the perpetrators, so the tenor.

In Mexico City, the inscription “Defending my life is not a crime” graced the protesters’ placards. The angry protests had such an effect that the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (69), also got involved.

He explained that he would work for a pardon for the 23-year-old. Apparently with success: a few days later the public prosecutor’s office obtained the acquittal of the young woman. After a later review of the case, the mother was “free from guilt,” it said in a statement. Ruiz’s newfound freedom was celebrated across the country.

“It Was My Life or His Life”

The defendant’s lawyer was also relieved by his client’s acquittal: “It simply means that you acknowledge your innocence. It is the realization that she was right when she defended herself,” the lawyer told the AP.

Before the verdict, Roxana Ruiz tearfully gave an interview to the Emeequis portal and recalled the night: «I fought back, he fell to the ground, I could put my shirt around his neck. I just wanted to save my life from a rapist.” She didn’t plan any of this, she says. “At that moment I was in mortal danger. It was my life or his life.” (dzc)

Source: Blick