Carlos Fazio: Fourth report of the GIEI: ominous pressures

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he fourth report of the Group Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), which, at the request of the parents of the 43 normalistas detained-disappeared in Iguala in September 2014, and by mandate of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, contributes and provides technical assistance to the investigations of the Prosecutor’s Office General of the Republic (FGR), the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa case (Covaj) and the Special Unit for Investigation and Litigation in the Ayotzinapa case (Ueilca), provides new data that strengthens the theory of state crime and the probable commission of crimes against humanity by commanders of the Army, the Navy and the police-military and judicial espionage apparatus of Mexico.

Since the beginning of its third term in 2021, the GIEI has carried out numerous efforts to document cases, collect evidence (videos, information cards, intelligence documents), accompany declaration proceedings and search, review and analyze files of the Secretariat of the National Defense (Sedena), the Secretary of the Navy (Semar), the Center for Investigation and National Security (Cisen) and the former Federal Police (today the National Guard).

Among the most important findings of the GIEI are: a) videos obtained by the Covaj show Cisen authorities and the former PGR practicing torture on detainees; b) the Cisen, the Federal and State Police of Guerrero and the 27th and 41st Infantry Battalions of the Army in Iguala, attached to the command of the 35th Military Zone in Chilpancingo (which depended on the IX Military Region), monitored, and they reported in real time all activity of the Ayotzinapa students, and had information on United Warriors and of the links of that criminal gang with local military and civil authorities, including members of the Army, the Navy, the Semefo and municipal presidents and police; c) the Army had intelligence personnel enrolled in the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal School who provided real-time information on the activities of the students; d) Between September 26 and October 4, 2014, high-ranking officers of Sedena and Cisen received documents and information on the interception of communications (including telephone tapping) from relevant actors in the events, which they did not make available for the search of the normalistas (including the possible destinations of the disappeared), some of whom could have been alive eight days after the events; e) On October 5, 2014, a coordination of high-ranking officers of all the security corporations and the PGR was set up, called war room, directed by Tomás Zerón, director of the Criminal Investigation Agency; f) On October 26, 2014, Navy personnel unloaded objects from two trucks in the Cocula garbage dump and moved to where they later would appear skeletal remains that were presented by the PGR as those of the normalistas (images that were taken by a high-tech drone that only acts under orders of the highest authorities of the State).

Information obtained by the GIEI made it possible to identify a so-called Regional Intelligence Command in the North Iguala Zone, which the Sedena used to carry out monitoring, telephone interception and call recording tasks, which complemented the indiscriminate interceptions of the Israeli program pegasus. The Sedena denied to the GIEI the existence of that intelligence center.

Based on the intercepted communications recorded in Sedena documents, the report refers to the holding of meals and joint activities between members of criminality and the military. In particular, it mentions the links of United Warriors with then Captain José Martínez Crespo, assigned to the 27th Battalion, and with Colonel Rafael Hernández Nieto, commander of the 41st Battalion. He also mentions ties to elements of the Navy, but does not name names; the criminal group’s access to information from the C-4 and the state police, and its close relations with the municipal presidents of Iguala, Cuetzala and Ixtapan de la Sal and the municipal police commanders of Cocula, Iguala and Taxco.

The GIEI described the so-called historical truth of Murillo Karam and Zeron as the fabrication of a story contrary to science (criminal/forensic) and objective evidenceand questioned the undue and untidy interference of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, in charge of Alejandro Gertz Manero, in some judicial processes, which reached extreme of entrusting the case to prosecutors from internal affairs of the former PGR and members of the former Siedo without knowledge of the investigation folder and the evidence contained in it −for example, in the consignment and arrest of Murillo−, which it violates the independence and autonomy of the Ueilca; compromises, weakens and dilates the investigation, and deepens the lack of trust of the parents of the 43 disappeared in the institutions and feeds their well-founded suspicions that decisions that should be technical-legal are being supplanted due to pressure from Synchronize judicial times with political times.

The GIEI questioned the audit sent by the FGR to the Ueilca, which initially focused on the preliminary investigation in which 83 arrest warrants were issued (and in particular on the investigation file that included 20 soldiers). And he expressed concern about the subsequent revocation (withdrawal) of 21 arrest warrants, among them, those of 10 soldiers from the 27th Battalion who, under the command of Captain Martínez Crespo and Second Lieutenant Fabián Pirita −by order of Commander José Rodríguez− were at the scene. of the events on the night of Iguala; that of the commander of the 41st battalion (Colonel Hernández Nieto); that of a military intelligence agent (Information Search Organ, OBI) assigned to the 27th Battalion, and that of the members of the Army who controlled the C4.

We have run into the Army, Sancho. The matter is delicate. The supreme commander, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did damage control: he attributed the crimes to five military commanders irresponsible; exonerated Sedena, and mentioned interests what did they look for burst Y dynamite research and generate rebellion military, without identifying anyone.