They sought to burst investigations into the 43 and Army rebellion: AMLO

Alonso Urrutia and Arturo Sanchez

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, September 30, 2022, p. 4

Given the controversies about the direction of the investigations and legal actions in the Ayotzinapa case, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador maintained that there are perverse intentions that “seeked to burst the investigation by talking about more people.”

In the case of the military, he noted, they blamed 20, when in the investigation there are five. Why put 20? Thinking that this was going to cause a rebellion in the Army if there were more of them and we were going to have to backtrack so as not to touch anyone.

When confronting the controversy over the withdrawal of arrest warrants by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the resignation of the special prosecutor for the case of the disappeared normalistas in 2014, Omar Gómez Trejo, the president established positions on high points during the morning yesterday.

He ruled out that there is any campaign by the Army against the Undersecretary for Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas, to whom he expressed his full support. Regarding Salvador Cienfuegos, former head of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena), he said that there are no elements to investigate him for the attack on the students in Iguala, Guerrero.

– And why allow the Sedena attack against Undersecretary Encinas? –She asked him.

“There isn’t that,” he answered.

Later he stated: there is no campaign. Encinas has our full support and, well, if there is a campaign against him, there is one against me.

The resignation of Gómez Trejo

In a long exposition on the subject, López Obrador confronted his vision with criticism of the course the case has taken. He rejected the version that there is pressure from the Army and affirmed that they are only rumours. In the armed forces they are very aware that someone who commits a crime cannot be covered up, because that, instead of strengthening the institution, weakens it, and it is a fundamental institution..

He insisted that conflicting interests converge in the investigation. He explained Gómez Trejo’s resignation from the fact that, upon detecting the interests at stake, he asked Encinas to act together with the Judiciary and the FGR.

“When the report is available, it is raised with the prosecutor: here is the document and we want action now, because if it leaks – as usually happens – and time passes, everyone will escape, there will be no justice (. ..) in a very short time the report was acted upon. When he arrived at the prosecutor’s office, as there are different interpretations there, they try, that is my interpretation, to blow up the process, because it was in the middle of arresting the prosecutor (Jesús Murillo Karam) and the military.”

The President thus alluded to the version that Gómez Trejo resigned, among other reasons, because Murillo’s arrest occurred without his consent.

Asked about the point, the President considered normal the interview granted by General José Rodríguez Pérez in Military Camp number 1, where he is imprisoned for the Ayotzinapa case, in which he criticizes the performance of Encinas. In the Sedena there is a prosecutor’s office, he recalled. If someone requests an interview and the prosecutor decides that it be granted, they can do so; I don’t care about that.

He asserted that the promotion of Rodríguez Pérez from colonel to general in the past six-year term, approved by the then head of Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, is part of the internal mechanisms in the Army. Upon express question, he ruled out any action against the former secretary: we don’t have items. That is why the commission was created (on Ayotzinapa) and there is the report. I wish with all my soul that everything can be disclosed without testament and with the annexes. no one is being protectedhe insisted.

Referring to the definitive suspension against the link to the process obtained by Murillo Karam, he considered that the former prosecutor has the right to defend himself, but emphasized that the ruling It doesn’t mean he’s going to get out of jail. It’s not the President’s business; that is the process that is taking place.

He stressed that there are those who even suggest that action be taken against former President Enrique Peña Nieto. Well, let Murillo speak, let him say if they gave him instructions, because in the document Peña does not appear as responsible, but his attorney.