Tel Aviv police on Monday arrested a former Mexican diplomat who is facing extradition for alleged sex crimes.
Mexico filed an extradition request last year for Andrés Roemer and the State’s Attorney’s Office recently ruled that he could be deported to his home country.
A 2021 Financial Times report cited accusations made by 11 women that Roemer had sexually assaulted them at his home after inviting them there for work meetings. He has denied all of the allegations.
Roemer won accolades in Israel and in the Jewish world after he was fired as Mexico’s UNESCO ambassador for refusing to vote in favor of a 2016 resolution that effectively denied Jewish ties to Jerusalem. He now holds Israeli citizenship.
The former diplomat has been recognized by the American Sephardi Federation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish groups for challenging the U.N. resolution. He even has a street in Tel Aviv named after him.
A lawyer, economist and playwright, Roemer is the grandson of Viennese orchestra conductor Ernesto Roemer, who fled Europe before World War II. A self-described “atheist Jew,” he grew up in Mexico City and had previously served as Mexico’s consul general in San Francisco.
