Justice for Ayotzinapa
Arizona Court affirms responsibility of Enrique Peña Nieto, ex-president of Mexico in the case of the 43 Ayotzinapa Students
February 26, 2020
Arizona Court affirms responsibility of Enrique Peña Nieto, ex-president of Mexico in the case of the 43 Ayotzinapa Students
Anabel Hernández: Contracoriente!
February 26, 2020
In a historic decision, an Immigration Court judge in a
political asylum trial in Arizona has refuted the official Mexican government’s
version of the Ayotzinapa case as a state fabricated false cover up.
For four years I witnessed a historical judicial process in an
immigration court in Florence, Arizona. The verdict in the case was issued on
January 7, 2020 and provided an unexpected turn to the case of the 43 students
of the Ayotzinapa rural normal school Raúl Isidro Burgos, missing since
September 26, 2014 in the city of Iguala, Guerrero. The forced disappearance of
the 43 Ayotzinapa students is an unsolved crime that marked the government of
former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
What not even the current Mexican government has dared to
say, Judge Molly S. Frazer has now stated clearly and forcefully: Only
institutions of the Mexican federal government had the power and political
influence to bring about the forced disappearance of the 43 Normal School students and then
attempt to fabricate a false official version of the events in order to cover
up the truth.
It all happened in the context of a political asylum trial
requested by a Mexican national named Ulises Bernabé García, who on the
night of the disappearance of the 43 young students was a barrister serving as
a temporary judge in a low level court whose duty was determine fines for people
who drank on public roads or drove in a drunken state, or created scandals on
the public roads. From being a simple justice of the peace, as these public
servants are also known, Bernabé García became a key witness to the events that
occurred and also those that did not occur on the night of September 26-27,
2014.
Traditionally, immigration courts in the United States are
conservative, even more so in a state like Arizona where there are ultra-right
groups that hunt in the desert for migrants who have crossed the border
illegally from Mexico to the USA. The trials of Mexicans requesting political
asylum in that country are very difficult to advance and to be granted the
protection of the American government is almost impossible.
At the end of 2015, American lawyer Margo Cowan, legal
representative of Bernabé García, recognized for her fight for the defense of
migrants' human rights, asked me to declare before the Court as an “expert
witness”, a judicial category in the US legal system. I had investigated the
case of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students and had already found
documentary evidence and clear testimonies that showed that the official version
of the Attorney General's Office of the Peña Nieto government about the events
in Iguala was false. My findings were made in accord with my professional methodology
of research that has allowed me to discover and document, corroborating facts
and truths before the much slower and often flawed Mexican judicial system.
Cowan knew that one of my main witnesses was Bernabé Garcia. I met him in November 2014 when I traveled to Iguala for the first time
to do a field investigation of the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal
school students, which was funded by the UC Berkeley Investigative Journalism
Program. My father had been kidnapped and disappeared in 2000. I also went through
an ordeal, not knowing where he was, if he was suffering, if he was hungry or
cold.
I could imagine what the parents of 43 felt for not knowing
anything about their children after more than 30 days. I can imagine their pain
after six years of not knowing the whereabouts of their children.
On that trip the first clear, crisp, spontaneous and
nonjudgmental voice I heard was that of Bernabé García. When everything was
murky, when the Mexican government imposed on the national and international
media its "official version" of the events, when it claimed that the
attack had been orchestrated by the municipal president José Luis Abarca and
his local police force, without the knowledge of the 27th Battalion of
Infantry of the Mexican Army, of the base authorities of the Federal
Police, of the base authorities of the National Attorney General, or
the state police being aware of the operation, when at the time all of these
government agencies were located within the perimeter of the locations where
the attack on the boys occurred, where three died and 43 have since disappeared.
The conversation with Bernabé García, typical of the manner when
I do this kind of research, started casually. He was free, he had no legal
problems, and the position he had as a justice of the peace was coincidental since
he was only a substitute for the actual magistrate who had requested permission
for a three-month temporary leave of absence. I asked him to describe the
events of that day of September 26, 2014.
His memory was still very fresh. He even told me what time he got up, at what time he showed up to work that morning at the headquarters of the municipal police in Iguala. He told me at what time he ate lunch, at what time did he return, and how many people had been arrested during that day and taken to the headquarters of the municipal police. He said six. He showed me right there the fines that he had ordered and how those men arrested who did not have money to pay the fine were taken into custody to the prison cells of the police headquarters.
His memory was still very fresh. He even told me what time he got up, at what time he showed up to work that morning at the headquarters of the municipal police in Iguala. He told me at what time he ate lunch, at what time did he return, and how many people had been arrested during that day and taken to the headquarters of the municipal police. He said six. He showed me right there the fines that he had ordered and how those men arrested who did not have money to pay the fine were taken into custody to the prison cells of the police headquarters.
According to the official version events related by the
National Attorney General (PGR), that night while the justice of the peace
ruled on fines for people were drunk in public or urinated on public roads, the
43 Ayotzinapa students had been taken to the headquarters of the municipal
police and from there they would have been taken in vans of the same police to
a place where they would have then been supposedly handed over to a known criminal
group that then killed them and burned the bodies. All done supposedly under orders
given by the municipal president of Iguala, José Luis Abarca.
I asked Barnabas Garcia about the students, he looked at me
and clearly told me:
“They were never there, go ask the army. The proof that they were not there is that the Army arrived at the same time they say the students were there.”
According to the PGR the army arrived between 11:30 p.m. and
12:00 a.m. At that time the fiercest attacks on the 43 students occurred in the
streets of downtown Iguala. The normalistas were shot and chased through the
streets. Two of them were injured were lying wounded on the asphalt in the
rain.
Barnabas Garcia was the first witness to say that the Army
was actually on the streets of Iguala at the time of the attacks. It was a lie
that they had no knowledge of the facts as the government said.
“Why lie if there was nothing to hide?” I thought.
That was the origin of my research on the presence and
participation of the Army. Justice of
the peace Barnabas Garcia was telling the truth, a year later the Captain of
the 27th Battalion himself, after lying several times in his first ministerial
statements, recognized the veracity of Bernabé García versions of the events in
Iguala.
After that clue I found many elements, including expert
evidence that proved that the Army and the Federal Police led the attack that
night and the resulting disappearance of the students. The entity that coordinated
all the forces of law enforcement was the Army.
The mayor and the municipal police were small figures in comparison to the strength of the Army and other federal government corporations that were watching and following the students for four hours before the attacks, during the attacks and in a direct consequence that led the disappearance of the 43.
Thanks to Bernabé García I followed the evidence to discover that the Army controlled the security cameras of the entire city, and it was the only the Army that had the access to be able to erase the videos of these cameras to eliminate any evidence that may implicate them.
The mayor and the municipal police were small figures in comparison to the strength of the Army and other federal government corporations that were watching and following the students for four hours before the attacks, during the attacks and in a direct consequence that led the disappearance of the 43.
Thanks to Bernabé García I followed the evidence to discover that the Army controlled the security cameras of the entire city, and it was the only the Army that had the access to be able to erase the videos of these cameras to eliminate any evidence that may implicate them.
I published this first part of my research in December 2014,
in an article titled "The True Night of Iguala", which later
became a book published in 2016.
As a result, this reporting which coincided with the most fragile point of the political discourse of the Peña Nieto government, days later the then attorney general went public and proclaimed his version of the official "historical truth" based on statements obtained under torture, and with zero expert evidence that could confirm any trace of the truth of these government statements. He began a fierce campaign of persecution against Barnabas Garcia who in order save his life then entered the United States illegally and requested political asylum because his life was in serious danger.
As a result, this reporting which coincided with the most fragile point of the political discourse of the Peña Nieto government, days later the then attorney general went public and proclaimed his version of the official "historical truth" based on statements obtained under torture, and with zero expert evidence that could confirm any trace of the truth of these government statements. He began a fierce campaign of persecution against Barnabas Garcia who in order save his life then entered the United States illegally and requested political asylum because his life was in serious danger.
For 4 years I testified in the Arizona Immigration Court
before Judge Molly S Frazer. I narrated my journalistic investigation step by
step, provide documents and evidence without embellishment. During each court
session, Judge Frazer asked for information regarding even the smallest of detail.
It was evident that she was seriously studying the details of the case. She had
in her evidence file 61 elements submitted by both Attorney Cowan and the
Department of Homeland Security who was opposed to the granting of asylum to Barnabas
Garcia.
As a general rule the US immigration courts are opposed to
giving political asylum no matter the profile of the person, and secondly
because, due to the statements given me by the PGR in Mexico, an arrest warrant
had been issued against Barnabas Garcia in order to silence him. And then the
army began to persecute him.
Because of the depth of information which the scope of the trial
revealed, and I know this first hand because I was there, Judge Frazer was not
only judging whether or not to grant asylum to Barnabas Garcia, she determined
that she really needed to know the truth of what happened that terrible night
in Iguala.
The Judge could have only delivered a ruling on Bernabé García’s petition for asylum, but on January 7, 2020, she went a step further: She not only decided to grant political asylum to the substitute Justice of the Peace Bernabé García, but she also issued a historical ruling that sets the antecedent within an American court regarding a serious violation of human rights in Mexico.
The Judge could have only delivered a ruling on Bernabé García’s petition for asylum, but on January 7, 2020, she went a step further: She not only decided to grant political asylum to the substitute Justice of the Peace Bernabé García, but she also issued a historical ruling that sets the antecedent within an American court regarding a serious violation of human rights in Mexico.
"The Court agrees with the conclusion of the expert witness, Mrs. Hernández, that the official historical truth, created by the Mexican government has been refuted, that numerous witnesses were tortured by the Mexican government and that pieces of evidence were also manufactured or sown at the scene of the crime by the Mexican government in order to support the false historical truth,” affirms the ruling of the Arizona Court."(The Court) Challenges the belief that a municipal police department would have the political influence and the resources to plan such an intricate cover-up and disappearance of the 43 Mexican students. It is much more possible that the federal government of Mexico and the federal police have been responsible for this horrible incident,” states the judgment of the court.
In this way, Judge Frazer not only extended protection to
Bernabé García, but provided in so many ways a form of justice to the 43
missing students, to their families, and for Mexican society as a whole.
It is a justice and truth that still until today the government of the leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador cannot or does not dare to uphold.
There are people in his cabinet who think the Ayotzinapa case will remain unresolved because the president does not want to have an internal fight within his administration with those implicated in the Mexican Army.
I still hope that is not true.
It is a justice and truth that still until today the government of the leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador cannot or does not dare to uphold.
There are people in his cabinet who think the Ayotzinapa case will remain unresolved because the president does not want to have an internal fight within his administration with those implicated in the Mexican Army.
I still hope that is not true.
