He later had to retract that statement

He later had to retract that statement.After being greeted by Mr Clinton on the South Lawn, Mr Zedillo said they would discuss illegal immigration, Mexico’s economy and drug trafficking. That reminded Mexicans of the words of President Miguel de la Madrid in September 1985, after at least 6,000 people, and possibly up to 10,000, were killed in an earthquake registering 8.1 on the Richter scale He declared that Mexico did not need outside help. Hotels were also damaged in another resort, Puerto Vallarta, but none collapsed.Mr Zedillo, under fire for his handling of the economic crisis, the unsolved murders of two top politicians and a cardinal, and alleged government links with drug traffickers, was immediately criticised for going ahead with his Washington trip.Possibly thinking of future tourist trade, he described the disaster as “not of unmanageable magnitude”. He had seen her buried under a huge pillar, apparently dead.Seven police officers were killed when a police station collapsed near Manzanillo. The government sought to play down the extent of Monday’s quake in resorts along the Pacific coast, but it could be a crippling blow to tourism at a time when the struggling economy badly needs the income.
The government sent troops to help with rescue work after Monday’s tremor, measured at 7.6 on the Richter scale.Worst hit was the upmarket resort of Manzanillo, 325 miles west of Mexico City.The seven-storey Costa Real hotel collapsed completely, trapping 30 guests and 27 employees as guests took breakfast just after 9.30am.Reuters reported that a 21-year-old honeymooner, Carlos Jimenez, sat with his head in his hands waiting for rescuers to bring out his bride. But he went ahead with his first state visit to Washington, where he was greeted at the White House by President Bill Clinton yesterday morning.

Her execution was recorded in the local emirates’ press in a single paragraph on an inside page.. President Ernesto Zedillo yesterday declared one of Mexico’s prime tourist playgrounds a disaster area after at least 66 people, and possibly many more, were killed in Mexico’s worst earthquake since 1985. When I asked if I could meet the Sri Lankan official who handled Sithy’s file, I was told that he was “quite ill at the moment”. More than a month after Sithy’s death, the Sri Lanka civil rights movement expressed its “shock and distress” that the most strenuous efforts to save her life had not been taken. The labour officer at the embassy would say only that Sithy was 20 years old when she was executed; she was in fact 19.

But he could not afford the cost of shipping her body home and reluctantly accepted that she should be buried in an unknown grave in Ras al-Khaimar. Sithy was a Muslim, and this would mean that she would be buried closer to the holy city of Mecca.When the Independent questioned the Sri Lankan ambassador to Abu Dhabi about Sithy’s death last week, he said he had no details since he had only taken up his post a month earlier. Given the rules of Islamic law in such circumstances, the emirates’ authorities concluded, the maid would have to be put to death.Her father originally asked for the return of Sithy’s remains to Sri Lanka. But, according to the Sri Lankan authorities, the little girl’s father, Said Mansour, still insisted upon Sithy’s execution and would not accept any offer of money.

The Sri Lankan charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi discussed Sithy’s case with the emirates’ ministry of foreign affairs. Repeated offers were made to the dead child’s family of “blood money” which would allow Sithy to be spared. Her father gave his permission for her to come home but, so he said later, Sithy decided to carry on working for another two years.When he heard of his daughter’s death sentence, he met Sri Lanka’s government leaders and personally appealed for his daughter’s life to the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan. The records state that the maid then wrapped the child’s body in a piece of cloth, placed it in a box and buried it beneath a neighbouring house.In the weeks immediately before the killing, Sithy had addressed several more letters to her parents, pleading to be allowed to go home, adding that her employer was not posting all her letters and was not passing on letters from her family.

A report by the Sri Lankan foreign ministry later recorded that Sithy “without any hesitation or fear.. admitted she committed the offence… she remembers the child biting her arm and she, having lost her temper, stabbing her with a pen-knife-cum-nail-cutter which was in her hand at that moment.”According to Ras al-Khaimar court records, Sithy stabbed the little girl with a “sharp steel key” after failing to resuscitate her when she had a fit. Her employer had invited relatives to live in his home, she wrote, ordering Sithy to look after all of them – a total of 17 children, some of them babies, and one of them a handicapped girl.After her execution, Sri Lanka’s newspapers – though very definitely not the emirates’ press – asked what had driven Sithy Farook to kill the four-year-old girl. In court, she readily admitted to the murder, as she did to Sri Lankan embassy officials. In his eyes, and in those of the court, there were no extenuating circumstances; no one mentioned Sithy’s pleading letters to her father, even if they knew about them.