There is an unwavering will to do justice to the 43: AMLO

Alonso Urrutia and Emir Olivares

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, September 27, 2022, p. 3

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared that this Monday was a day of national mourning for the disappearance of normalistas from Ayotzinapa and said that his government will fight for the punishment of those responsible for the crime, despite the legal chicana who, with the dissemination of data from the file, bet that the violation of the sacrosanct due process lead to exculpations.

It is not only a legal process, it is a matter of State and justice, the president pointed out at yesterday’s conference. He stated that this research is an issue that has to do with cleaning up the image of the Mexican State and the Army.

He recalled that there was a slogan that blamed the disappearance of normalistas on the State. Yes, so much so, that we are acting from the State, a different State, which does not allow the violation of human rights. He asserted that his position is that nothing be hidden about this case, because before there was a pact of silence.

He made a new defense of the Army, limiting his responsibility in the case. “Yes, action is being taken, but the Army is an institution. Who were those who participated directly, indirectly? Who should be punished? But no: ‘Ah, the entire Army’. What do they want? That our Army is weakened? For whose benefit? What do they want? A discredited Army?

military they must assume their responsibility

He added that there are five members of the Army who have been found responsible for the disappearance, those of higher rank. This does not mean want to stain the Army. If this group was applied in these criminal actions, they must assume their responsibility, it does not mean that the entire institution is responsible.

–Is the version that the normalistas were transferred to the military zone (the 27th Infantry Battalion barracks) included in the report (of the Truth Commission on the case)?

–No, what is in the report is that they kept six young people after the scandal, that it was already known that they had disappeared and that a scandal was generated. They were still alive and, according to the investigation, they gave the order to disappear them.

–Not specifically that they entered the military camp?

-Nope. To a warehouse, they had them in a warehouse, is what the report says.

López Obrador considered that the dissemination of the untested (censored) file was made bad faith, but my opinion is that things should not be hidden. I apologize to the parents, not only for that, but for everything they unfairly did to their children. Justice must be done, but neither buzzards nor vultures nor hawks can enter.

Arrest warrants, unrelated to the report

To a question about the withdrawal of arrest warrants against soldiers, among other alleged perpetrators, promoted by personnel from the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), the President maintained that this decision was due to the fact that such accusations are not derived from the report of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case, headed by the Undersecretary for Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas.

–Those 21 orders were not in the report…

-Nope.

–…and that’s why they were cancelled?

-Nope. It acted from the people who appear as responsible in the report. This does not mean that the investigation is closed. And those who are in the report and it is proven that they participated or are allegedly responsible, will make their version known and clarify whether they participated or not, whether they are guilty or innocent, whether they received orders, from whom.

The president believed that these arrest warrants against the military should no longer be reactivated: I think no, it shouldn’t, because the report is what we consider to be valid, without ruling out other.

He argued that there are many interests at stake (among which those who were linked to the events or the investigations stand out); differences of opinion between the Judiciary, the FGR and the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case. There are also those who benefit from the administration of the conflict. Not the parents, but those involved in this matterbut we have an unwavering will to do justice.

-It is assured that elements of the FGR jumped to the Unit in the cancellation…

-Yes, there are differences because there are many interests.

López Obrador referred the references to the Army to the case of the arrest in 2020 in the United States of the former Secretary of National Defense Salvador Cienfuegos: How without notifying us? Send us the file. And what’s in the file? Trash. Was it nothing more than defending a Mexican, a member of the Army, a division general, the Secretary of Defense? No, it is the defense of our sovereignty.