A Bar Association (it is not clear if this is the Puerto Rican Bar Association) requested that the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions, Australian Philip Alston, investigate the United States for the death of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos at the hands of agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

Included in the 30 page request, is a request to interview 31 people including governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and Luis Fraticelli, director of the FBI in Puerto Rico.

The next step after filing the complaint is for Alston to communicate with the Government of the United States. Once the federal government approves Alston coming to Puerto Rico, the U.N. Rapporteur will visit the Island for a field investigation related to the death of Ojeda Ríos on September 23, 2005.

If the U.S. does not approve Alston’s visit, the Rapporteur will note the denial in his report and will denounce the U.S. position on an international level, according to Romany as well as attorneys Ricardo Alfonso García and Fermín Arraiza Navas, members of the third Bar Association commission to intervene in this case.

The attorneys posit that the case of Ojeda Ríos is not the only extrajudicial execution on the Island, mentioning as an example the death of Santiago Mari Pesquera, son of independentista leader Juan Mari Brás.

Do people really expect the U.S. to be held responsible to any international law?

Via / El Nuevo Dia