Julio Hernández López: Shipyard

Q

To close a year in which threats and judicial actions against journalists multiplied in various parts of the country, in Veracruz the unusual and aberrant accusation of terrorism was withdrawn from Rafael León Segovia, a specialist in police source matters, but in an equally oversized manner and with the reek of revenge on the part of local powers, he was placed under house arrest for up to a year pending a resolution as to whether he is responsible for crimes of cover-up for favor and against public security institutions.

León Segovia was arrested on the 24th by state police, in coordination with members of the Secretariat of National Defense, under a main accusation that caused surprise to President Sheinbaum herself and led her to ask for clarification: terrorism, a concept highly avoided by Mexican authorities because such typology intends to be harnessed by Trumpism as one more of the pretexts seeking to intervene in Mexico.

The President pointed out that this type of accusation had not occurred in Mexico and that freedom of expression should be respected; After that, the Veracruz prosecutor, Lizbeth Aurelia Jiménez Aguirre, and the governor Rocío Nahle, who had justified the accusation of terrorism, backed down, but Judge José Guadalupe Nucamendi Albores imposed house arrest on the journalist for one year to resolve the criminal process.

The arguments to subject the journalist to trial are grotesque. In accordance with what is reported in Article 19, for the authority, making information about an event known to society constitutes an indication of prior knowledge of the criminal act. That is to say, under the argument that Rafael “arrived earlier” to cover the story, the prosecution is seeking to criminalize his work (…) In an implausible way, the journalistic coverage of Rafael and the efficiency with which he does his work were argued by the prosecution as supposed “evidence” of illegal acts. Even more absurd, he is accused of not reporting or denouncing to the authorities “his knowledge of alleged criminal acts.”

It is worth saying that this case is not the first in which there has been an accusation of terrorism in recent times. On June 20 of the year that ends today, the lawyer Miguel Ángel Guzmán Michel, professor at the state public university and activist and legal representative of several popular movements, was arrested in San Luis Potosí, especially in defense of communities where gold deposits have been found and are intended to be evicted, and against caciquismo and charrismo in the National Union of Education Workers.

Guzmán Michel was imprisoned for three months, in poor conditions, and was released thanks to efforts by the Presidency of the Republic and the Ministry of the Interior, according to what he said. They accused him of having planted bombs in Pemex facilities in Chiapas and other parts of the country in 1997: “I didn’t know what I had done those days; it is almost impossible to remember. They told me that there was a protected witness who had pointed me out.” Finally, he was able to prove that on the dates of the accusations he was teaching at SLP (video interview: https://goo.su/moNwsM).

In Puebla, meanwhile, the Marinista-Morenista governor Alejandro Armenta continues to falsely accuse journalist Rodolfo Ruiz, who had a file from five years ago unearthed to subject him to judicial proceedings. Before, Armenta had offended Ruiz based on lies, since he did not write a text that led him to even request that the state prosecutor’s office investigate him. Now he has said that the federal secretary for women, Citlalli Hernández, had mentioned criticisms from Ruiz that he never wrote. In weeks, said journalist will know if he will be imprisoned for the accusations uncovered.

And, wishing this column its readers and families a happy new year, see you Friday!

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