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Mexico launches probe after girl wrongly sent to U.S.

Xinhua, April 25, 2015 Adjust font size:

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) is launching an investigation into the case of a Mexican girl who was grabbed by Interpol officers and wrongly sent to the United States to be with a woman who thought she was her daughter.

On Wednesday, 14-year-old Alondra Luna Nunez was seized and dragged kicking and screaming out of her school in central Michoacan state by Interpol agents who thought she had been wrongfully taken to Mexico by her father.

Dorotea Garcia, a woman residing in the United States whose child had been taken by her estranged partner eight years ago, had mistakenly identified Nunez as her missing daughter.

Nunez was quickly returned after a video of the abduction made the rounds online, leading Mexico's Foreign Relations Ministry (SRE) to get involved. A DNA test was done, proving it was a case of mistaken identity, and Nunez was back with her parents the next day.

The case, however, has sparked outrage.

On Friday, CNDH head Luis Raul Gonzalez said that once the commission found out about the "regrettable incident, it began to process the related complaint."

In a televised interview, Gonzalez said the CNDH has requested detailed information from various agencies involved, including the SRE, the National Attorney General's Office, the National Security Commission and the Supreme Court of Michoacan.

While the police had all the legal documents required to reunite the girl with her mother, "common sense dictates that first...the receiving authority must ascertain the identity of the person," Gonzalez said. Endit