Free Free Now, Ferrat behind bars! - November 11th, 2010

It’s already more than a year ago that our family member and friend Free Bronkhorst, a young Dutchman who worked hard to realise his dream to start his own restaurant in idyllic Tulum, was put behind bars. He is accused of having attacked and wounded Ivan Ferrat Mancera, brother of Alain Ferrat Mancera, boss of the local green party PVEM of the state of Quintana Roo. A video clip shows however irrefutably that it was Free who was attacked. But the Judge didn’t want to accept the video as proof as long as its origin could not be determined and ever since the unfortunate businessman is incarcerated in the local Cancun prison.

The authenticity of this video has now finally been established. It shows how Ivan Ferrat Mancera and his friend (Juan Adolfo Montiel) deliberately attack Free and hurt him whilst keeping him to the ground, only to accuse him afterwards of all the savage beating and kicking they perpetrated on him.
A recently presented forensic study describes moreover in detail how the witnesses of the prosecution ‘err’ when they declare how Free savagely beats up Ivan Ferrat : this self-declared victim had no single serious internal or external lesions, apart from a broken nose after Free hit him, trying to break free of him. It was a clear case of legitimate self-defence.  

That’s all! No fracture of the base of the scull – as Luis Guillermo Denis, the Ferrat family doctor pretended - and no broken mastoids. Ivan was so drunk and under the influence of ‘other substances’ that he fell over as a lead soldier when Free beat him off. All he had was a concussion of which he recovered within a few days.
According to the statements by the Red Cross ambulance attendants and the doctor in charge at the emergency unit, Ivan Ferrat was fully conscious upon his arrival at Galenia hospital, ‘combative’ and ‘without apparent loss of alertness’. It should astonish nobody if Ivan showed signs of dullness, after having waited for a few hours on a hospital bed, tired after almost 24 hours without sleep, hitting his head on the ground and above all, under the influence of too much alcohol. As he no longer reacted properly to questions and other tests to determine his state of alertness, he was anaesthetized and a mechanical ventilation tube was inserted in order to prevent him to suffocate in his own vomit.

From this moment onwards the Ferrat family, followed therein by some amazingly credulous judicial authorities, speaks about the ‘coma’ and the life threatening situation’ of Ivan. All of a sudden there exists a horror scenario justifying the ‘express’ incarceration of Free.

No coma, only comedia, for lucrative ends. Even some medical doctors went along to maintain this false impression. That’s the reason why Ivan recently refused to undergo a tomography. Luckily the judge wasn’t impressed by his doctor’s gratuitous arguments and ordered the tomography anyhow. That’s how we all came to know that apart from his broken nose Ivan Ferrat did not have any serious injuries as a result of his attack of Free.

In order to not further damage the tourist image of Cancun we accepted in January of this year a demand by Sr. Jesus Almaguer Salazar, director of the Cancun Tourist Board, to stop our public demonstrations against the injustice done to Free. We accepted his request to let justice run its course. But it is becoming clear to us now that even with all the recently established evidence in favour of Free, he won’t regain his freedom this year.
We have tried to show that it are not the family and friends of Free who damage the good name of Cancun, but rather the Ferrat family, its ‘witnesses’ and its not so very scrupulous ‘helpers’ who abused the Quintana Roo Legal system, to their own benefit, by means of perjury and influence trafficking, in a deliberate process to “fabricate the accusations against the Dutchman Free Bronkhorst”

We wonder how it is at all possible to work with such an outdated and insufficient penal system and to simultaneously pretend to host guests from all over the globe. For well over a year Free has been imprisoned and we’ve had to watch from abroad while these malfrats* poured out a never ending stream of outright lies. We’ve had to bleed financially to pay for lawyers and experts to refute these lies and proof Free’s innocence. We’ve suffered the abduction of Free’s mother with the purpose to have her killed, and the first explanation on this crime still has to be forthcoming.

And while Free is kept imprisoned in Cancun, we have to watch how the city and its councillor-elect Alain Ferrat Mancera, the very one who orchestrated the false accusations against Free, are preparing with much fanfare, to receive the COP16 climate conference. We feel it is rather grotesque that at the reception of the political leaders of the World, at a United Nations event, the city of Cancun will be represented by a fellow who at that very moment holds another guest ransom in his municipal jail. We therefore address ourselves in turn to the director of the Tourist Board of Cancun and ask him and his colleagues from the tourist sector to do everything in their power to have Free go free.

As long as Free is kept imprisoned we will again organize public demonstrations. Our anger with the injustice done to Free will shortly show up in public manifestations in Europe and even at the Cancun Climate Conference COP16. We demand Free’s unconditional release and will ask the public opinion from the centre of this World happening for Justice: a just punishment for the cruel city councillor and freedom for Free and others in his situation, in Cancun and wherever they might be. If the Cancun tourist sector understands her mission it should be possible for Free to watch the COP16 as a free man.

As long as Free is imprisoned due to the lies of Ferrat Mancera we hold him responsible for Free’s wellbeing. Up to the moment that Free is set free and Ferrat takes his place.

*Malfrat: popular French for criminal; contraction of the words ‘malfaiteur’ (evildoer) and ‘rat’.