Nestora Salgado Accuses PRI Candidate Meade of Defamation

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Animal Político

May 21, 2018
Thanks to Tu Fren for the Heads Up

The plurinominal candidate Morena, Nestora Salgado publicly challenged the PRI presidential candidate Jose Antonio Meade to check his statements about her after he stated during the second debate,  that the activist had committed acts of kidnapping and recrimination  Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for the candidacy granted to Salgado.

"Defamation is a crime and I challenge you publicly to prove your claims. It's enough that you and the PRI criminalize the social fighters. We're not going to leave! " Nestora wrote on her Twitter Account.

During the second presidential debate, José Antonio Meade read a note regarding the case of Nestora where the multi-nominee candidate allegedly asks for a sum of money in exchange for the delivery of a woman. 

After reading it, Meade pointed to Nestora as a "kidnapper".

"Nestora Salgado is going to be a multi-member senator for Morena, a kidnapper who is free because of a failure in the police. This, Andrés Manuel is in your conscience, " said the PRI candidate Meade to AMLO during the debate.

In the face of this assertion, Nestora received the support of  people on social networks and called on the candidate of the All for Mexico coalition to verify their argument.

The case of Nestora

On April 20, the Verified 2018 team published a note with the history of the Morena candidate and the legal situation in which she is currently.  

(Borderland Beat has covered her rise to a Hero of Mexico for organizing and training a community police force which fought and won against the Los Rojos cartel that had taken over her hometown

it was Salgado who commandeered a police patrol car and used its megaphone to call people into the streets. “Leave your fear at home! Come out!”

 to trumped up charges which caused her to be imprisoned for almost 3 years.  BB followed her release from prison when all the charges were dismissed.  You can find those stories in our archives by typing her name in the search box on the right side of this page. Maybe the best of those stories is at 

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/12/detained-mexican-activistnestora_31.html#more)

Nestora Salgado, now multi-member candidate to the Senate by the coalition Juntos Haremos Historia, has been the leader of the Community Police of Olinalá, Guerrero since 2012.

“She had more right to be the leader because she has more guts than any man,” said villager Marisela Jimenez.

 On August 21, 2013, Salgado was detained by elements of the National Army, Navy and Federal Police in Ayutla, Guerrero, for the crimes of kidnapping and organized crime. Two days later, on August 23, she was transferred to the Federal Social Readaptation Center Number 4 in Nayarit.

Nestora was charged with the abduction of Eugenio Sánchez González, a resident of Olinalá, who was arrested by the Community Police after being accused of cattle theft, a crime for which would have to pay for by cleaning and carry out cultivation work in the House of Justice, as determined the Community Assembly, ie Community Service.

The other accusation against the ex leader of the Community Police was her presumed participation in the kidnapping of at least 50 people; four of them minors: one of 11, another of 13 and two more than 17 years old. For this she was accused of organized crime.

Between August 22 and 23, 2013, the First Judge of First Instance in Criminal Matters of the Judicial District of Los Bravo issued a search warrant for the House of Justice of El Paraíso, Ayutla, where the community police, in charge of Nestora Salgado, operated. In the place 42 people were released.

The defense of the rescued people told  Verified 2018 that "all the released were unjustifiably deprived of their freedom, since there were no complaints made against them by any direct or indirect victim."

Verified highlights the role of community policing is regulated by  Law 701 Recognition, Rights and Culture of Indigenous Peoples and the state of Guerrero Communities , in which it is established "that the police have powers to detain suspected criminals when there complaints, submit them to a trial before the Community Assembly, which also sets a penalty, generally based on community work. "

In the same way, the defense of the victims denounced that the Community Police requested the detainees money. "Amounts ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 pesos, to be released." By having an economic benefit, according to this version, the crime of kidnapping is proven.

Leonel Rivero, spokesperson for Nestora's defense, explains that the amounts requested were measures to repair the damage, after the crimes committed by the accused.

On March 31, 2014, the magistrate of the First Unitary Court, based in Acapulco, annulled the accusation of organized crime, whose accusation was the only federal crime charged to Salgado; while the kidnapping investigations continued their course.

In 2015, Nestora was transferred to the Female Prison of Santa Martha Acatitla, in Mexico City, and then sent to the Tepepan Medical Tower, to be treated for a spinal condition.

Finally on March 18, 2016, after two years and seven months in prison, Morena's candidate was released thanks to the decision of three Guerrero judges who determined her innocence in the face of the accusations for the imputed crimes.  This was after intense international pressure for her to be released.  The United Nations found that she was being held as a political prisoner. 

According to Leonel Rivero, Nestora Salgado's lawyer, the former leader faced seven criminal proceedings, of which five are concluded: organized crime and four more for kidnapping.    

In all these cases, she was declared innocent.

The two processes that remain open, explained the lawyer, are because the Public Ministry filed two appeals in 2016 against his release.

However, argues Leonel Rivero, "almost two years have passed and no hearings have been held (to conclude the proceedings) because, according to the authorities, it has been impossible to notify the victims."

The defense assured Verificado 2018 that Salgado has no pending arrest warrant.

"The only way this situation could be reversed is for these appeals to be declared admissible, and even in that case, the Public Ministry would not request the arrest again, since Nestora Salgado could fight those resolutions with an indirect protection and could even count on the review resource, " he said.

For its part, the Prosecutor of Guerrero maintains that there are still two criminal cases opened for the crime of kidnapping against Salgado, but gave no further details of the progress of the investigations "because they are open trials," the statement read. 

By: Verified 2018.