MEXICO CITY ( Associated Press) – The investigation process into the disappearance of 43 students that took place eight years ago was shaken on Saturday by the leak of the contents of an official report on the case to the press, prompting officials to ask the Attorney General of Republic for an investigation.
Under Secretary for Human Rights and head of the Truth Commission, Alejandro Encinas, condemned the dissemination of parts of the report in the local newspaper Reforma, which the Commission had given to the Attorney General of the Republic on the investigation into the disappearance. 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Normal School, which took place between September 26 and 27, 2014 in the southern city of Iguala, Guerrero State.
The leaking of the report came weeks after Encinas presented to the press the investigation by the Truth Commission, which determined that the Ayotzinapa case was a “state crime” after accepting responsibility for three levels of government, including elements of the 27th. . Infantry Battalion of the Iguala.
The Reforma report reveals new data on how the bodies of young people died and disappeared, and the actors involved in these actions, information on which Encinas did not comment.
The Under Secretary for Human Rights considered the leak of the report “absolutely irresponsible” and “a lack of respect for the fathers and mothers of the students”, and said on his Twitter account that the leaks “far from helping the investigation, would have harmed it”. and open the way to salvation”.
Encinas announced that he had asked the attorney general’s office to launch an investigation to identify and punish those involved in what he described as a “serious leak.”
Condoling the leak, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh) – which has supported relatives of the missing students – said the action “revives families”, and said in a statement that officials, Which “causes confusion and pain by acting irresponsibly”, not the press.
Similarly, the Product Center expressed concerns about information released by the press that the Attorney General’s office allegedly requested the cancellation of certain arrest warrants in the case, which, according to the media, would have benefited the military.
“We will analyze the legal scope of that decision, just as we are analyzing the persistence of a recently launched criminal proceeding, concerned about the displacement of UEILCA (Special Unit for the Investigation and Litigation of the Ayotzinapa Case), The statement said. ,
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that Judge Samuel Ventura Ramos of the northern city of Matamoros was informed to the attorney general’s office of “the possible commission of crimes against the administration of justice and whatever consequences”.
In the letter, Ventura Ramos is accused of issuing “more than 120 acquittals” of those prosecuted for the disappearance of 43 students.
This week, the judge acquitted 24 detainees who were not released because they are accused of organized crime and forced disappearances, the statement said.
Ventura Ramos also this month acquitted the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, who went missing after the case, and 19 others who were detained as they were facing other procedures.
The Product Center questioned on Saturday whether recent acquittals of judges are criminally condemned, and said in a statement that “prosecutors and public ministries are the ones who must be held accountable because their actions and omissions reach that extreme.” have arrived.”
The Human Rights Center of Tlacinolan Mountain, the Funder Analysis and Investigation Center and the Civil Organization Services and Advice for Peace (Cerapaz) and the Prod Center recently urged the Attorney General’s Office to appeal Abarka’s acquittal, recalling that the sentence One stems from a “poor performance by the Attorney General’s office at the time” and from an allegation filed in 2014 that “there were several irregularities, including a widespread practice of torture” that led to the exclusion of many evidence.
The controversy over the leak of the report’s contents follows protests that students’ families held this week at a military compound in the Mexican capital and the headquarters of the republic’s attorney general, ahead of the anniversary. disappear. After protests by relatives, some protesters with their faces covered with T-shirts, staged violent acts at two facilities in which fifty policemen and soldiers were injured.
The Ayotzinapa process took a turn last month after the Truth Commission released a new report on the matter. Shortly after the presentation of the report, the Attorney General’s Office announced that it had issued 83 arrest warrants against those involved in the case, and that former Attorney General Jess Murillo Karam had been arrested. The government reported last week that three soldiers had been arrested, including retired General José Rodríguez Pérez, the commander of the 27th Infantry Battalion.
