A video with tortures to a detainee for the disappearance of 43 students of Ayotzinapa released this weekend in Mexico, confirms that human rights were violated in the investigation, denounced this Sunday several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO).
Led by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, the NGOs indicated that the video confirms the use of torture in the case and proves that the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) concealed it in a recommendation that is no longer reliable.
The video posted on the networks this weekend, shows the torture of Carlos “N”, one of the detainees for the disappearance of the students of Ayotzinapa, which occurred on September 26, 2014 in the Mexican city of Iguala.
For the NGOs, the torture observed in this video vindicates the actions of international organizations criticized by the Government of Mexico, as happened with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) in this country.
The observed coincides with the findings of a ruling of a collegiate court that criticized the actions of the authorities in the case and ordered the creation of a Truth Commission, which has not yet been installed, they said.
Officially, according to the investigation of the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), the 43 students of the Normal School of Ayotzinapa were disappeared on September 26, 2014 by policemen of the municipality of Iguala who handed them over to criminals who murdered them and burned in a garbage dump.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that dropped the official version, denounced the use of torture in the investigations of this case.
The NGOs recalled that the UN-DH already reported in a report the existence of “strong elements of conviction” that there was torture in 34 cases of detainees, including the person in the video.
The organizations pointed out that their recommendation on the case of Ayotzinapa, the CNDH, concluded that it only detected torture in 8 of the 72 cases it received for this practice.
In the case of the person in the video, the CNDH determined that “there was no evidence that he had been subjected to suffocation or electric charges” despite the abundance of evidence and the repeated complaint of the detainee, they accused.
The NGOs criticized the CNDH for its “poor approach to the investigation of torture in Mexico” in trying to classify cases of flagrant torture as cruel treatment.
They considered that before the public confirmation of the torture shown in the video, the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic should support the efforts of the Presidential Commission created to review the case.
The prosecution should strengthen the investigation team and make new accusations because if it relies on the recommendation of the CNDH rather than the work of the agencies “will miss the opportunity to fully clarify the case,” they warned.
They also indicated that it is still pending to investigate the officials involved in the case, such as Carlos Gómez, who was in charge of the ministerial police in 2014 and who, after revealing the video, resigned his position as Undersecretary of Public Security of the state of Michoacán.
Ayotzinapa, the NGOs conclude, is the case that tests the willingness and ability of Mexican authorities to “address human rights violations and break institutionalized impunity.”
