Last week, the Senate modified what was originally approved by the deputies: sentences of 6 to 15 years in prison throughout the country, since six entities had higher penalties which would have caused the release of 600 criminals sentenced for extortion, according to the reasoning.
Also unanimously, the deputies agreed to the changes made by the senators to aggravate the penalties for public servants who fail to report acts of extortion, as well as to force the Attorney General’s Office and the state Prosecutor’s Offices to have units, Public Ministries and personnel specialized in matters of extortion.
These proposals had been made by opposition deputies and, in the case of prison sentences, also by the Labor Party (PT), however Morena and the Green Party (PVEM), together with the Citizen Movement (MC) had endorsed lower sentences than in some states, reducing the punishment for public servants and that the anti-kidnapping units were also responsible for investigating extortion.
In the discussion, the deputy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Emilio Suárez Licona asked not to accept another of the changes made to the minutes by the Senate, regarding media.
The senators “modified article 17, but in its wording it continues to consider and profile the generation of environments of fear by the media and digital platforms as an aggravating factor in the crime of extortion.”
This is “a change that calls for reflection, since in practice the interpretation of the law could lead to practices of censorship or persecution,” he warned.
PAN member Marcelo Torres recalled that his party warned that Morena and allies had approved lesser sentences and “the warning was fulfilled.”
”We told them once, twice and a thousand times. But the ruling party always prefers to play the expert rather than accept reality. They don’t understand what they are voting for. Today the minutes return from the Senate with modifications that coincide exactly with what we explain here.”
However, contrary to what was stated above, PRI member Suarez Licona celebrated the Senate’s changes to article 17, section V, “precisely to make it clear that what aggravates extortion is the use of telephone services and telecommunications systems specifically, and not those media outlets that you invented and that legally had neither head nor head.”
PT member Lilia Aguilar recalled that her party also demanded more severe penalties and the Senate agreed with them. But he assured that the opposition wants to hang on to that proposal.
Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, also from the PT, acknowledged that the senators submitted “a more robust, more technical, more modern and, above all, more powerful minutes to confront the main criminal scourge in our country today: extortion.”
He explained that now the sentences for extortion could reach up to 42 years “for those bad public servants, criminal leaders, the subjects who commit this type of reprehensible acts.”
