The impunity of Mexico: 60 arrested after chapo's escape...only 10 left in prison

Chivis Martinez  from Proceso By Patricia Davila July 30th, 2018         

El Chapo´s escape: Three years later, federal officers imprisoned by court order

The property which El Chapo Guzman supposedly escaped from

Translated by "Cruz" for Borderland Beat

Mexico City (Proceso).- The Attorney General's Office (PGR) has not had the proof to show the culpability of the federal police detained due to Joaquín Guzmán Loera, El Chapo´s last escape.

Nevertheless, the families of the detained have accused The Attorney General's Office (PGR) of having a slogan judge that has kept them prisoners to "simulate" that they have punished the people responsible of the escape. They are talking about Guillermina Matías Garduño, head of District courthouse IV Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Mexico.

On July 11th, 2015, when the then leader of the Sinaloa Cartel managed to escape through a tunnel, the authorities apprehended 68 Federal Officers, afterward the number of detainees dropped to 61, then to 18 and now there are only 10 behind bars.

Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, whom recently took federal officer Luis Alberto Aguilar Morales case because of a petition made by Movimiento Magisterial Democrático (Democratic Magisterial Movement), a group from Chiapas that participates in mobilizations for the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa, informed Proceso about his new case:

“The thing  that I am able to notice from the case files the first outline is that you can perceive that the federal officers who do not have a high rank, with the help of the judge, are whom the PGR foist the responsibility of the escape (of El Chapo)."

The views of the lawyer are also shared by the spouses and family members of the rest of the defendants arrested for not activating the Code Red when the drug traffickers escape took place. The spouses explain that their husbands where not authorized to do so.  However, they say that the judge accuses them of omission because, according to her, being public workers, they had the obligation to activate it.

Until now, two of the judge's cases have fallen through after National Security Commission (CNS) accredited that the arrested agents "did not have power and that the activation of the Code Red was not in the guidelines.

After taking their case before a federal court, both federal officers where set free. After spending two years in a maximum-security prison located in Tepic, Nayarit, Reyes Amir Mota Carrilo obtained his liberty August 23rd, 2017.

Mota Carrillo appealed the formal prison order that Víctor Octavio Luna Escobedo, predecessor of judge Matías Garduño gave him in July of 2015, and Óscar Espinoza Durán, from Toluca, Estado de Mexico, head of the Quinto Tribunal Unitario en Materia Penal del Segundo Circuito (Fifth Courthouse Unit of Second Circuit Criminal Matters) determined that there were no elements to maintain him in custody.

 Agent Mota, who entered the tunnel used by the capo to escape, stated that he was not in the vicinity of the monitoring area during the time of the escape and that his job function was intelligence. "We are there to do that type of work and not there to guard" (Proceso 2031).

The other federal officer that was recently set free is Miguel Ángel Flores Mirafuentes, who was released March 3rd, 2018 from the Centro Federal de Readaptación Social ( Social Re-adaptation Federal Center) in El Rincón, Nayarit.

Proceedings that are drawn out

 Michel Veytia, sister of officer Oswaldo Veytia, sets forth the actions of judge Matías: "I don't know why, but I request that my brother have a test to determine his risk factor. He went through several different precautionary measures located in the states of Nayarit and Hidalgo and they declared that there was no jurisdiction in the case.

"Only the unit based in Estado de México accepted the work and coordinated with the units in Nayarit and Hidalgo. This has prolonged my brothers’ proceedings. It has been a year, when in fact, this whole process is one of which should not take more than three months."

 And she continues: "A kidnapper gets a severe sentence for depriving someone of their freedom. So then, what would be the proper sentence for the judge who kept him, prisoner, for her eagerness to make an allocation valid, such allocation that has already been proven to have not been my brother's responsibility?"

 Michel remembers that the commissioner of the Federal Police, Manelich Castilla Craviotto, presented a document in which he verifies that activating a Code Red is not the responsibility of the agents currently in custody.

"As for my brother, he was not even a person tasked with monitoring; he was a transcriber for the Intelligence Division. Even still, her excellence still refers to my brother as ‘the person tasked with monitoring Oswaldo Veytia Rodríguez’.”

Interviewed by this weekly newspaper, the wife of one of the arrested federal officers agrees to speak under the condition that her name is withheld:

"My husband was eating dinner in the cafeteria when the escape happened. When he got to where he needed to be, everything was on Alert. They keep blaming him, stating that he did not activate the Code Red. In January of 2018, they gave him a new formal prison order. He now has three. First, they accused him of three crimes and now he only faces the crime of prisoner escapism. He already has protection from the judge; they should give the decision in a month or in a year. Unfortunately, there is no estimated date. They had already released him, but they apprehended him again."

Instead, Mrs. Edith, a family member of agent Jaime Galindo Hernández, who was handcuffed to a chair during a 72-hour interrogation at the PGR, mentions that they denied him of precautionary measures, even though he was of low risk.

-Does the judge do this intentionally?

-I think so. He should already be free. One agent was asleep during the escape; another, cleaning; another, eating dinner; another, monitoring. My family member did not have a monitor or a computer because he had to pass on the report that his shift was ending.

The case of federal officer Vicente Flores Hernández is perhaps one of the most dramatic cases. He has been incarcerated for three years and his mother passed away while he was imprisoned; She was denied medical attention from the Instituto de Seguridad and Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado ISSTE (The Institute for Security and Social Services for State Workers) which she had previously received for years because she was unable to present a receipt of her sons’ income.

His wife Trini states: "I had to go before the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (National Human Rights Commission) so that I would be allowed to see him. Both of his wrists were seriously injured. They had him handcuffed to a chair".

She states that her husband was set free towards the end of September of 2015, in accordance to the law, because they did not prove anything against him. He was reinstated and sent to work in Guadalajara. Trini recalls that one day her husband was at a funeral when they called him via phone to let him know that two of his co-workers had been once again apprehended. So then his lawyer -his cousin-  filed an appeal to avoid him being arrested.  Trini affirms that her husband's defense lawyer had to quit because she had received death threats. "They told her that her head would roll if she continued on the case."

After her husband was recaptured, now being accused of failure/omission in Chapo's escape, Trini started to sell meals. "I have three small children. I would save up as much as I could so that I could give it to attorney José Alberto Conde de la Cruz. I gave him like 60 or 70 thousand pesos (about $3,000-$3,500 USD) After that, I had to sell the car that used for the harvest, to give everything to the attorney. In the end, he abandoned my husband's case and kept my money".

Selective Justice

Up until now, only the federal officers tasked with monitoring are under the judge scope. Corrections officers and other prison authorities have not been questioned.

-Why did they go after the federal officers? - Vidulfo Rosales was asked.

-To justify that people have been arrested, that it is under investigation and that people are being punished, while the people that actually had anything to do with it are without punishment. They want to put the whole escape thing to rest under the pretense of it being the fault of the person tasked with monitoring when it is evident that senior officials took part in the escape, who are untouchable, and they want to present Luis Alberto and his co-workers as the people responsible.

On Thursday, July 26th, judge Guillermina Matías Garduño denied the motion to change the precautionary measure of pretrial detention for a less restricted one.

Vidulfo adds the following: "The judge has a history of rejecting the modification of pretrial detention, alleging issues that have already been exceeded. In fact, la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Interamerican Human Rights Court) has established that you cannot continue making a disproportionate use of pretrial detention because that can violate the presumption of innocence and it would imply an anticipated sentence".

This text was published July 29th, 2018 Proceso magazine 2178 edition.