Between dilemmas, GIEI will define if it remains in the Iguala case

Blanche Petrich

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, October 30, 2022, p. 6

Thanks to the coordination agreed between the different authorities responsible for clarifying and justice in the Ayotzinapa case at the beginning of the six-year term – Commission for Truth and Access to Justice (Covaj), the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit (Ueilca) and the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) – it was possible in the last three years to access crucial clues that the previous government had hidden. Faced with these advances, the families of the 43 normalistas came to express their hope that now yes they would come to know the truth about the whereabouts of their children.

In August of this year, signs appeared that this inter-institutional agreement was beginning to crack. In the words of the members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), in recent weeks there have been hasty events. They add – in an article published by Washington Post on August 10, signed by the four: Ángela Buitrago, Claudia Paz y Paz, Carlos Beristain and Francisco Cox– that the investigation now faces a crucial dilemma between truth and concealment.

These signs surfaced on August 18, during the meeting called by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the investigative agencies, the full cabinet, parents of the victims, their defenders and the GIEI. On that occasion, Alejandro Encinas, head of the Covaj, presented new elements of the investigation, impressive and painful.

The families, their representatives and the GIEI experts listened in astonishment, because they did not know this information: indications of how they murdered and hid the bodies of the 43, who had been separated into at least three groups and taken to different places, after the 26th and September 27, including six of them to the 27th Infantry Battalion in Iguala. All this, derived from cell phone text captures, delivered by a fountain.

The battalion commander, at that time Colonel and now General José Rodríguez Pérez, is imprisoned in Military Camp 1. The other three soldiers involved and detained are Captain José Martínez Crespo, Second Lieutenant Alejandro Pirita and Sergeant Eduardo Mora Esquivel. On October 13, a judge granted them an injunction.

five weeks later, New York Times published a version of Encinas’ statements in which he allegedly admits that, after a second analysis of the texts among criminals, they had to discard some. They do not have enough elements to be accredited. The next day, the Undersecretary of the Interior replied that it was not so what was declared to the newspaper, that the aforementioned text captures are only a part of 150 elements considered relevant and that 12 complementary sources gave concurring testimonies. There are some so consistent that by removing the capture they remain in force.

End or continue?

Among these doubts and contradictions, this October 31, the extension of the GIEI expires, which had a precise objective: to corroborate the evidence presented on August 18 by Encinas to determine the reliability of this test according to international standards.

If the work of the group continues or concludes, essential to have the confidence of the group of parents of the 43, it will be known tomorrow, at the press conference that its members will offer.

A month ago, during the presentation of the third GIEI report, the group denounced the improper interference of the FGR in the investigation. However, he considered that there were still conditions to continue the search for truth. In those days, the confusion generated by the sudden retirement of the special prosecutor Omar Trejo, the three public ministries and the 15 policemen assigned to his unit, as well as the transfer of all the investigation folders, all by orders of the FGR, still reverberated. .

The GIEI had supported the files that the Ueilca worked with various evidence of the participation of the 83 people (21 of them military) against whom arrest warrants were initially requested for the events of the night of Iguala and in the heroin trafficking connection Iguala-Chicago.

They are also chat of cellular communications, the famous Blackberries of United Warriorsbut unlike the screenshots of the Covaj, these were provided in July of this year by the prosecution in Illinois, at the request of former prosecutor Gómez Trejo (and with the help of a presidential administration).

Since 2015, when it released its first report, the GIEI established the following recommendation: Investigate as a priority line of the triggering of the aggression against the normalistas the motive for the transfer of narcotics. That is, precisely, the line of investigation that deepens the messages provided by Chicago.

Chats and screenshots

The Blackberry chats are part of an investigation by the Chicago Department of Justice into the transfer of heroin from Iguala to that city. There are 12 messages that contain specific mentions of jerks carried out by drug traffickers with the complicity of soldiers in the area, where they mention kids, vases either gifts as keys to drug packages and foods Y crab soup, alluding to the delivery of money (bribe) to those who protect the transportation network via modified line buses. Members of the Navy are identified as marinela. Among the military they mention Curly –comment is to every mother– and a Hernandez Nieto. also to a Nava Already Fencealluding to Vallarta, police chief of Iguala.

Part of this investigation, incomplete and late, remained stored in the drawers of the Siedo and the PGR of Jesús Murillo Karam.

The new approach that the former prosecutor gave to these messages gave rise to the 83 arrest requests from the Ueilca, canceled almost immediately at the request of the FGR. They were supported by other elements: expert reports, wiretaps and ministerial statements from protected witnesses.

Regarding the possibility of reversing the cancellation of the arrest warrants, on October 24, upon leaving a meeting with the President, the lawyer for the group of relatives, Vidulfo Rosales, informed the day that, given the indications of the fathers and mothers, it was agreed that if there are elements, they will seek to reactivate the 21 arrest warrants.

Between the hasty acts The GIEI is talking about the way in which the requests for arrest were handled by the FGR, which transferred them to a Public Ministry not familiar with the case and granted by a judge who did not know the files either. Consequently, neither 83 arrests nor 21, among these 16 soldiers. Only four have been arrested.

What is at stake is, among other things, the possibility of submitting to a fair and well-founded trial the former prosecutor Murillo Karam, who for four years operated to hide the truth and protect those responsible for the 43 disappearances and three murders of normalistas ( Julio César Nava, Daniel Solís and Julio César Mondragón).

On September 26, the eighth anniversary of the events in Iguala, what they wanted to avoid happened. It was a day of rage. In some rallies, the anger overflowed, such as in front of the Israeli embassy, ​​where they protested against that government’s refusal to hand over the cover-up Tomás Zerón, who fled to that country, where Mexico does not have an extradition treaty. And the vandalism that was unleashed, like never before, in front of the Military Field.

The words of a father of a normalista resounded who, in front of the National Palace, said with great regret: There was a little progress with this government, but when it came to the point of touching the Army, everything fell apart..