SEATTLE — A Seattle attorney representing a community police leader who has been jailed in Mexico says she is expected to be released from prison Friday.
Thomas Antkowiak says courts in Mexico cleared Nestora Salgado of remaining charges Thursday night and ordered her freed.
Salgado is a resident of the Seattle suburb of Renton who returned to her native Mexico and led a vigilante-style — but legal — community police force, which mounted patrols to protect residents from corruption and organized crime.
Salgado was arrested in August 2013 after people detained by her group said they had been kidnapped. A federal judge cleared her of those charges, but a related state case has kept her imprisoned.
Antkowiak directs the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University Law School, which has pursued her case before a United Nations panel. Last month, that panel ruled Mexico’s arrest and its continuing detention of Salgado are illegal.
