Gustavo Castillo Garcia
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Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday December 6, 2022, p. 4
Chihuahua, Chih., The so-called Operation Justice for Chihuahua, applied during the government of PAN member Javier Corral Jurado (2016-2021), was actually a plan to pressure, torture and indicate
more than 300 former local officials, businessmen and political opponents in 89 investigation folders and turned 85 of them into protected witnesses so that they could point out collaborators of former governor César Duarte Jáquez, now imprisoned for alleged diversion, as guilty of embezzlement and other crimes resources, indicated former public servants who claim to have been victims of these actions.
The investigations launched last year into these cases, related to those known as X Files
have already resulted in the arrest on November 21 of former prosecutor Francisco González Arredondo, who was the head of the Public Ministry agents who participated in Operation Justice for Chihuahua from the basements of the so-called Haunted house
(formerly Government House of the state of Chihuahua).
González Arredondo faces criminal proceedings for acts of torture, based on an accusation presented by the entity’s Attorney General’s Office, now in charge of Roberto Javier Fierro Duarte.
After the arrest of González Arredondo, several of the former officials who were accused and subject to proceedings or who had one of their relatives imprisoned at that time, decided to give the day his testimony of what he lived during the government of Javier Corral Jurado.
The security strategy of X Files
according to the fifth Corral government report, presented in August of last year, allowed the prosecution of 123 cases, the execution of 92 arrest warrants and 16 convictions.
police-ministerial center
The Haunted house
It was the center of police-ministerial operations under the command of González Arredondo, which indirectly triggered the death of at least two people, according to the testimonies of Luz María Martínez Robles and Martha Patricia Banderas Barrera.
In one case, Jose Lázaro Joaquín López, infected with covid-19, died on August 27, 2020, due to lack of timely care by local prison authorities
. He had been director of the Chihuahuan Trust for Productive Activities (Fidapech) during the government of Duarte Jáquez.
On December 24, 2020, Julio Sánchez Chánez, a former adviser to the Urban Development and Ecology Secretariat, died due to worsening kidney problems, after spending almost a year on the run to avoid arrest, along with his wife, Martha Patricia Banderas.
To assemble their accusations, mostly for the alleged crime of embezzlement, the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office, through prosecutor González Arredondo, granted the status of protected witness to 85 of those investigated, who they only had to repeat what was ordered then, in order to imprison people who worked in the administration of César Duarte Jáquez
assured Martínez Robles, Banderas Barrera and Raymundo Romero Maldonado, Secretary General of the Government during the mandate of César Duarte.
The revenge
Martha Patricia Banderas, who served as director of the Administration of Educational Services for the State of Chihuahua, spent two years in prison accused of participating in the diversion of 5 million pesos for having signed a budget sufficiency for the teachers union.
The accusation was notified to me until I was imprisoned. There was no exculpatory evidence that was valid. There I began to understand that Corral’s revenge was a plan to pressure people from the bottom up to get to César Duarte, putting minor officials in jail to testify against his bosses and, in turn, the secretaries
They will impute the predecessor of the PAN leader.
The Chihuahua justice system initiated three criminal proceedings against her. They forced me to plead guilty. It was the only alternative to get out of prison. They made me pay to repair the damage and to this day I continue to do so. Because the other option I had was to be imprisoned for the four years that Corral was going to last.
.
Covid infection and death
José Lázaro Joaquín Gutiérrez was linked to a trial in August 2018 for embezzlement and was ordered preventive detention. In 2020 his family and his defense requested Judge María Alejandra Ramos Durán to allow him to go to home prison due to his age, because he suffered from hypertension and because he was at risk of aggravating and catching covid -19. In the end, in the Aquiles Serdán prison he was infected with coronavirus, said Luz María Martínez Robles, his wife.
In August 2020 he fell ill and according to the clinical file he was treated at the Cereso hospital on a Friday and on Saturday they ordered him to be transferred to an external hospital, but it was not until Tuesday when they took him. After his death, Judge María Alejandra Ramos Durán, who denied him house arrest, filed a complaint for homicide by omission against whoever is responsible.
he added.
Just last December 1st, it was announced that, since August 28, 2020, two days after Gutiérrez’s death and when Corral was still governor, the Chihuahua Civil Service Secretariat annulled the probable administrative responsibility of the former Fideapech official.
No arrest warrant
Another case is that of Raymundo Romero Maldonado. He was 74 years old when he was arrested on December 24, 2018 and faced an embezzlement process. “I found out after my arrest. That day it was raining and the temperature was about -2 degrees Celsius. I had prostate cancer and months before the oncologist had ordered 41 radio sessions that I started in May of that year.
“The agents took me to the Aquiles Serdán prison, they left me in a prison courtyard. Since it was raining, I tried to take shelter and a guard ordered me to return to the patio. There two more officers arrived who told me: ‘We are going to introduce him to the prison. Stand there and get naked.’ I explained to them that he had received radio sessions for cancer problems and that he was delicate.
“I begged them, I humbled myself, I told them, ‘don’t do this to me, I’m delicate.’ The answer was: ‘The longer you talk, that’s where you’re going to stay. All. Take everything off’. And they ordered me to always look at a camera.
“They gave me an old and dirty uniform. Marcelo González Tachiquín, former Secretary of Education –also a prisoner– lent me a blanket and let me sleep on the concrete bed that was in the cell. The cold penetrated my bones and I did not have my medicines.
“Until December 26 they took me before the control judge. My wife and my lawyer told him that he had been detained without an arrest warrant or giving me the opportunity to call a lawyer. The judge’s response was: ‘No, no, he’s already here. Let’s keep going’.”
The fact, prior to his charge
“It was absurd what they accused me of. They accused me of embezzlement because I supposedly endorsed the purchase of a property that the Ministry of Finance had acquired in 2011, a year before I was Secretary General of the Government and headed the Real Estate Heritage Committee, whose responsibilities include endorsing the acquisition of estate.
The property is in Guachochi, it was for a military barracks. The government paid 15 million and Paco González’s people said that his appraisal estimated the price at 6 million pesos.
Raymundo Romero spent two years in house arrest, accused of having influenced the payment of a premium of 9 million pesos for that land.
Your process is not complete. He claims that the land is still in the possession of the Chihuahua government and is currently quoted at around 70 million pesos. What is my crime if I arrived a year after the government had agreed to the purchase?
