“According to Miss Cassez judicial statement, during the hours of her illegal detention and before the fake police operation pulled of by the Federal Investigation Agency for the media; she states that she was mistreated, humiliated and denigrated with sexual obscene language”.
By Gabriel Infante Carrillo
In the past few days, events related to the Mexican justice has figure front page and main headlines in the Mexican media. First we were shocked after viewing a video recorded on a mobile phone and uploaded on Youtube, of five teenagers being tortured and sexual humiliated after they were caught stealing a house in Tepic, the capital city of the state of Nayarit. Then Juchitepec, a rural town in the State of Mexico, an angry mob detained and tried to lynch four allegedly kidnappers. But what brought more attention to the media was the premature announcement of Mauricio Fernandez Garza, the new mayor of the richest municipality of the country, San Pedro Garza Garcia — located in the outskirts of Monterrey, the capital city of the state of Nuevo Leon— of the murder of Hector “El Negro” Saldaña, a drug trafficker and a kidnapper in Mexico City . Also he pointed out that he will take legal action beyond his competence to fight the organize crime within his municipality by creating a sort of a paramilitary group. This created a huge fuss among the government officials and his own party, the ruling party: The National Action Party (PAN). Its president and congressman, Cesar Nava, pointed out that: “we can’t fight illegality with illegality”.
The statement of Cesar Nava, brings me back to Florence Cassez’s case; the Frenchwomen accused of kidnapping and sentence to 60 years in prison and became a national debate marked by the first official visit of French president, Nicolas Sarkozy back in March. During the previous days of his arrival with the first lady, Carla Bruni; the Mexican society, driven by civil organizations, condemn Florence Cassez and discredited completely her side of the story, without questioning a bit the flaws in the judicial process. Beginning with the way she was detained and held hostage instead of taking her to the General Attorney’s Offices to begin the judicial process as marked by the law. According to Miss Cassez judicial statement, during the hours of her illegal detention and before the fake police operation pulled of by the Federal Investigation Agency for the media; she states that she was mistreated, humiliated and denigrated with sexual obscene language. As far as I know, this was never investigated. We don’t have to be an expert in criminal justice to get to the conclusion that the federal police committed a series of crimes and acted outlaw. As I see it, this case by no means was a fair trail nor a matter to do justice; it was clearly a political issue. In one hand, president Sarkozy was hoping to negotiate with the Mexican government to transfer Florence Cassez to a French prison. In the other hand, President Calderon was being pressured by Isabel Miranda de Wallece, an activist in pro kidnapping victims and the main detractor of Florence Cassez, and also the country was few months away to begin midterm election’s campaigns. If he would have accepted to transfer Miss Cassez or even begin to negotiate with President Sarkozy, this would definitely put his presidency in more difficulty, in midst of a society fed up with the lack of results on the most urgent national affairs, especially security, which is a extremely sensitive issue.
Cesar Nava’s statement contradicts completely with the way the government enforce the law. In my view, the statement was to reinsure to the society the government’s “false discourse” that Mexico is a rule of law country, and most of all not to show weakness in the eyes of its detractors, who consider that the government has been overtaken by the organize crime.
Recently, the first lady, Margarita Zavala stated that “the fear of the society feeds impunity and doesn’t allow the authorities to act”. In other words, while the society doesn’t denounce, the authority can’t fight crime. This reaffirms that Mexicans not just mistrusts the authorities, but they fear them as well; but in the eyes of the first lady, the citizens are to blame for the increase of violence and crime in the country. While the government don’t realize that they are the problem, injustice and violations of human rights will prevail, and more cases like Florence Cassez or the society taking justice into their own hands, will be more common in a increasingly Mexico's social unrest.
Versión en español
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