Judge Acquits Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, Alleged Leader of 'Guerreros Unidos', On Organized Crime Charges

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The Attorney General's Office could not prove the existence of the criminal group Guerreros Unidos.

A federal judge ruled to acquit Sidronio Cassarubias Salgado, alleged leader of the criminal group Guerreros Unidos, of the crime of organized crime because the Attorney General's Office (FGR) could not prove the existence of the criminal organization blamed for the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students.

Samuel Ventura Ramos, First District Judge for Federal Criminal Proceedings based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, also acquitted the former mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, José Luis Abarca Velásquez, for the same crime.

Judicial sources explained that the FGR brought criminal action against both individuals in October 2014, because a group of people called Guerreros Unidos, allegedly led by Sidronio Casarrubias, had been organized since 2011 to commit crimes against health.

In the sentence, the judge excluded evidence obtained in violation of fundamental rights (for example, through torture or illegal detentions), such as 47 testimonies.

Once this was done, he issued a judgment of acquittal in favor of the two individuals.

The judge held that the Attorney General's Office, in the original criminal proceeding, "did not prove the existence of the criminal organization Guerreros Unidos, nor did it prove that the defendants belonged to any criminal group".

They indicated that the FGR tried to prove the existence of the criminal organization with the certified copy of several sentences issued in different federal criminal proceedings, however, in them the existence of different groups, such as the Beltrán Leyva cartel and La Barredora, "and from their content there is no evidence that the former derives from the latter".

In addition, the witnesses, whose testimony was lawfully collected, gave news of the illegal deprivation of liberty of various persons, among other activities, but not of the existence of the criminal organization.

Likewise, the documents exhibited by the prosecution show the existence of other preliminary investigations and that in them evidence was gathered related to proceedings against other persons in Mexico and abroad. However, in addition to the fact that these cannot be considered as evidence in the original proceeding (precisely because they were gathered in different investigations), their content does not prove that the defendants belong to a criminal organization.

Finally, the judge specified that the decision should not be understood in the sense that the criminal organization does not exist, nor that the facts for which the accusation was formulated did not occur, but that the evidence provided by the prosecution (which was not excluded), in this criminal case, does not prove it.

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