CNDH demands clarification of the veracity of the list of victims of the death flights

Jessica Xantomila and Jared Laureles

The newspaper La Jornada
Friday, August 9, 2024, p. 13

About to release its latest report, the Historical Clarification Mechanism (HCM) of the Truth Commission on Human Rights Dirty Warlocated in March (by one of its investigators) a list of 183 people who were allegedly thrown into the sea during the death flights that took off from the Pie de la Cuesta military base in Guerrero.

This document, located in the archives of the Eureka! Committee, was sent at the time by a person who identified himself as a former military officer to Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, founder of that first group of families of missing persons, and to this day it is not officially known why she did not distribute it when she had it in her hands.

It had not been shared by the MEH either, since the team headed by historian Eugenia Allier Montaño considered that before making it public, it was mandatory to subject it to a process of expert appraisals and a period of analysis and contextualization to check data and then compare it with groups of victims and survivors.

The document, which is housed in the Academic Center for the Memory of Our America of the Autonomous University of Mexico City, a space that safeguards the digital archive of the Eureka Committee, came to light these days.

The National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) – chaired by Rosario Piedra Ibarra, daughter of the founder of the Eureka Committee! – called on State institutions to provide certainty to the families of the people mentioned in the lists on the truth or falsity of the criminal facts that can be inferred from it, as well as that the information be treated with the greatest possible care, in conjunction with the families of victims of forced disappearance, so that the right to the truth is guaranteed..

Open investigation

He said that the issue of the death flights It was incorporated into recommendation 98VG/2023 and is a line of research that the organization keeps open.

For his part, Allier Montaño stated that in the document found in the committee’s archives, dated May 2004, and which was given at the time to Ibarra de Piedra, the former military man assured having witnessed the way in which guerrillas were killed and then thrown into the sea.

He also attached “a ‘relationship’ of 25 flights listing the names of 183 people,” the date and place of detention, the pseudonym and the military and state units that were involved in the operations.

This is the “first document found in which the identity of possible victims of the death flights“, the researcher said.

In a statement, it said that 150 of the 183 people They have been accredited as victims of forced disappearance, since their names appear on lists compiled by Femospp (Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past), Comverdad (Commission for the Truth of the state of Guerrero), the Eureka! Committee, HIJOS and the CNDH..

Consistent elements

He assured that after an analysis comprehensive on the information found and putting it in relation to other sources and knowledge, the list presents elements consistent in broadening interpretations and historical clarification.

Meanwhile, the other group of MEH experts (Abel Barrera, David Fernández Dávalos and Carlos Pérez Ricart) expressed on social media that this document strengthens the approaches outlined in the investigation of this mechanism.

The issue was brought up for discussion in November 2002 in a trial against Generals Arturo Acosta Chaparro and Francisco Quirós Hermosillo, accused of having ordered the dumping of more than 200 corpses between 1975 and 1979.

In 2008, The Day published the letter in which soldier Benito Tafoya acknowledges the existence of flights in which he took peasants from Guerrero into a helicopter to Tie them by their hands and feet and tie them to some iron bars and then throw them into the sea..