Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers and best wishes.
My lawyer didn't even bother going into court yesterday. He knew that the judge was not going to issue a verdict. On friday the judge issued orders saying that my wife had improperly filed her appeal and marked the Mexican Central Authority, local Child and Family Services and prosecutors office as "tercer perjudicados" which roughly translates to "injured third parties". I am an injured third party if the appeal is granted but they are not. The judge said that since they are invalid as " tercer perjudicados" he would give her three days to manifest if it is her desire to change them from tercer perjudicados to "autoridades responsables" or authorities responsable for the alleged violation of her constitutional rights. It was not my wife's intent to delay anything by doing this but rather one of the many incompetent things her and her attorneys have done throughout this litigation which have lead me to frequently say that in Mexico a monkey can defend a kidnapper while LBP's need expert advice and representation to confront the many obstacles and disadvantages they face in a system that, by design, strongly favors mothers and Mexican citizens (even if the State Dept. tells you that you don't need a lawyer). In addition, when court cases involve minors, a legal practice known as "suplencia de la queja" is applied that basically says that judges should consider other arguments that haven't been entered by either party when trying to resolve the case such that the best interest of the child is guarranteed. In practice this principle means that even incompetent lawyers representing abductors have their filings fixed by the judges themselves while poor filings made by LBP's are thrown out or denied -- both of which waste ungodly amounts of time. The result of the judge publishing an order giving my wife 3 days to modify her appeal 3 days before he was supposed to make a decision is that those three days will not have transcurred prior to the hearing date and the hearing would be rescheduled for a month later. Had the judge published this nonsense on Thursday (rather than friday) we could have had a decision yesterday, but I think that was part of the reason he waited till friday. What makes this even more frustrating is that we waited months while this same judge "legally notified" these same authorites that they had been listed as "tercer perjudicados" to an amparo only to now have him say they had been improperly listed as such... Welcome to Mexico I guess.
My lawyer did go to court today to review the docket and told me that the federal prosecutors office (which has nothing to do with the Central Authority, unlike in Brazil) has filed a brief with the court "attacking me with everything". I'm not sure what that means or what implications it will have for my case at the next scheduled, and likely postponed again, decision date in mid-january, but I will have a better idea once my lawyer gets back to Mexico City, so I can talk to him in greater detail and get copies of the prosecutor's briefs.
When I think about how many agencies my wife has been able to get to side with her and take actions on her behalf I get even more angry thinking about how the only one helping me is the Office of Children's Indifference who "will not take sides" in "private custody disputes". As angry as I am with Mexico I respect them for at least fighting for their own citizens (such as my kidnapping wife -- even when she is wrong) and not writing them off to avoid the mere possibility of diplomatic friction even when they are right like the US government does.
