Mexico investigates case of mistaken US return

Alondra Luna Nunez is back with her family in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato after DNA tests in the United States proved her identity.

She was proved not to be the long-lost daughter of Houston resident Dorotea Garcia. Her daughter, Alondra Diaz Garcia, was taken from Texas to Mexico by her father in 2007. Her whereabouts, as well as the father's are unknown.

On April 16 the 14-year-old Alondra had been forcibly removed from school in Guanajuato and flown to Texas after judge Cinthia Elodia Mercado in the western state of Michoacan ruled in favor of Garcia - who believed Alondra was her daughter.

Garcia had asked Mexican authorities in 2007 for help in returning her daughter. Garcia thought Alondra was her daughter because she has a scar between her eyebrows similar to one her own daughter had.

Images of Alondra being taken by police and put into their patrol car were shown online and the case became news throughout Mexico.

Alondra had asked for DNA tests in Mexico before she was sent to the United States. Her parents presented more than a dozen documents including her baptismal records, family photographs and a copy of her birth certificate.

But Judge Cinthia Elodia Mercado ruled Alondra was in fact Alondra Diaz Garcia. The judge said this week it was not within her authority to order DNA testing, and she had to ensure Mexico followed international conventions on child abductions: "We, as judges, are only responsible to resolve the case with respect to recovering the minor," she said. "We don't do investigations or make inquiries."

But Mexican authorities are now going to investigate. The Michoacan state prosecutor's office said in a statement it was investigating actions that involved the judge and which probably "violate the child's best interests and could constitute as illegal acts."

The National Human Rights Commission has also launched an investigation, which its president Luis Raul Gonzalez said would seek to ensure that there was "no impunity" in the case.

jm/bk (AFP, AP)