the morning of 24 February 2015, the engineer Francisco Herrera, then aged 39, was intercepted when driving to work, in the city of Tampico, Tamaulipas, by at least two vehicles which the in cajonaron in an avenue and forced him to stop the March.
As were the C4 of the city chambers, one of those car descended at least one person who boarded the van of the engineer Herrera, and then three vehicles departed, already with the engineer under “illegal deprivation of liberty”, then get lost , such as point out the preliminary investigations that separately initiated both the Attorney General of Justice of Tamaulipas, the day of the events, as the Attorney General of the Republic, a month later.
Since then, the whereabouts of the engineer Francisco Herrera (employee of a producer of paper, newly separated, who lived in a House of social interest with a bed and a table of unique furniture plastic) is unknown.
While evidence accumulated over the three years and half since the Rapture point to a suspect, paradoxically, the same preliminary investigations undertaken (to which Animal politician had access) evidenced omissions and dilatory actions by part of the investigating authority, whose consequence was the acquittal of involved alleged saying, that is the Mexican army.
The Rapture at noon on 24 February 2015, having no news of the engineer Francisco Herrera, and not to contact you in any of their two cell phones, his family began tracking it through your cell phone geolocation service, which It ranked facilities of the 15 battalion of infantry, Tampico, as the last point where your cell phone is activated.
As noted the GPS Tracker, the appliance had activated within the military barracks at 9:35 of February 24, i.e., around two hours after the engineer was kidnapped.
With this GPS information, family members moved into the barracks, at the head of which was at the time the general diploma brigadier of the estado mayor Jesus Alejandro Adame Cabrera.
To the ministerial declaration on the facts, this military acknowledged having attended to the family of the engineer Herrera, who “personally took the part where supposedly the phone, and there was nothing, because there are no facilities, is a green area” .
By then, more than nine hours had passed since the phone is activated in that place.
Highlights a fact: this military underlined in his statement that, with the intention of helping this family, himself suggested search in the Tancol colony, surrounding the barracks, specifically in “houses that border the fence perimeter of the military camp”.
The family not attended that suggestion, and instead went to the Attorney General of Justice of Tamaulipas, to formulate a formal complaint on the disappearance of the engineer to the local public prosecutor.
As stated in the ministerial denunciation of this family, a series of peculiar coincidences occurred just when they had just entered the premises of the MP: first, the engineer Herrera phone returned to give a signal, and a new GPS, a House location precisely located next to 15 battalion, adjacent to the fence perimeter, as had suggested the in charge of the barracks.
This new GPS location it was communicated immediately to the brigadier general Jesus Alejandro Adame, who reported to the family of the engineer who, by their own free will and without notifying them, it had integrated a contingent of 50 soldiers to go out and look for it in the colony adjacent to the barracks.
according to the military, the contingent of soldiers went quickly to the address designated by the family of the engineer, but did not find anyone that opened the door to them.
“I went to play – stated the military before the Public Ministry – and did not leave anyone.” That was the entire search.
Damage control the day after the disappearance of the engineer Herrera, his mother told the MP that a group of at least four military was watching the home of his son, and other members of the family.
Although they were dressed in civilian, the family could see that it was military since, to detect them, they told the 15 battalion to denounce that strangers were doing patrols in their homes, whereupon, the brigadier general Jesus Alejandro Adame confirmed them that it was soldiers who conducted research to support the search.
Should be noted that, according to the Mexican legal framework, the army is not empowered to perform any type of research relating to the Commission of crimes on the common agenda or violations to human rights committed by its members, exclusive Faculty of the civil authorities.
Pay Ministerial Declaration, responsible for 15 battalion stressed that at all times the military acted in good faith, to support the search. However, his same statement follows information that admits to having collected the army, then was hidden to the family and the judicial authorities.
In the internal report titled “urgent. No. PTN. INF.333 “, the general reports which came into contact with the charge of the C4, so military personnel conduct” an exhaustive search in logs recording with that feature in the Centre of monitoring “, in order to identify the time, place and form in which it was deprived of freedom the engineer Herrera.
That tracking in the archives of the C4, carried out by the military, allowed to identify the moment in which was intercepted truck engineer Herrera, and he kidnapped.
However, as reported the charge of the 15 battalion, once the images were gathered and carried to the barracks “there them left, in the battalion, because not had I no object (sic) of send is them to nobody”, and then added: “those images not is them showed to the family” Herrera”, under the logic that they, on their own,”sometime they would ask that information”to the C4.
These videos also revealed that the quota of vehicles which was kidnapped engineer Herrera stopped, for a few minutes, in a gas.
This gas has eight security cameras, so, according to the ministerial declaration of the general brigadier, elements of the Ministerial military police, whose name and grade said no recall, came to the place to confiscate videos from the day of the kidnapping, whose content does not has been included entirely to the research, because the army, until the date, only has delivered to the PGR fragments edited.
Two days after the abduction, the same charge of 15 battalion drew up an internal report, which concluded, without providing any element of proof, which the engineer Herrera is “part of a group of the criminal organization of the Gulf Cartel that operates in the area “, and may have been subjected to an attack by the same criminal organization”.
With that, the army gave terminated their participation in the search for, and determine any liability.
Three weeks after the abduction, the brigadier general Jesus Alejandro Adame Cabrera was relieved of his duties at the head of the 15 infantry battalion in Tampico, and relocated the remote military in Badiraguato, Sinaloa.
Campo Militar No. 1 the surveys produced by the PGR revealed that on February 28, 2015, four days after the abduction of the engineer Francisco Herrera, two cell phones he carried with him recorded activity, and the signal of one of these devices could be traced back through geolocation systems to a precise location: latitude 19 °, 26″, 14′ North, and longitude 99 °, West 20′ 14″, coordinates that correspond exactly with the location of the field military number 1, on the border between the city of Mexico and the Mexican municipality of Naucalpan, the headquarters of the Mexican army.
As described in the preliminary inquiry, the PGR did not no diligence to find out why this victim of disappearance phone emitted a signal, four days after her abduction, from the main military barracks in the country.
The auto when the engineer Francisco Herrera was kidnapped, the perpetrators were also with his truck, a Jeep Grand Cherokee with 14-year-old.
The official version indicates that this vehicle was located five months later, after a clash with members of organized crime happened at the ranch “El Perro”, of the ejido Ruiz Cortines, in the municipality of Gonzalez.
However, the official version, however, is denied with the same preliminary investigation.
The owner of the dog Ranch, for example, told the MP that your property is not in the ejido Ruiz Cortines, and in his ranch there was never clashes between official forces and organized crime groups.
He also clarified that it was not somewhere flat and uninhabited, as it was described by the authority, but it is a ranch in constant agricultural production, with permanent presence of workers and traders.
Moreover, contracted crane operator to tow truck, crane Aries private service, also told the MP that he had originally been called to remove a different vehicle, guarded by the army in the town of Gonzalez.
According to his testimony, when he had already raised that car, going way back to his home base in Tampico, a military vehicle reached it and its crew requested that he hooked a second car located in a municipality Villa Gomez, i.e., a distinct municipality to which authorities said.
was the Jeep Grand Cherokee of the engineer Herrera which, according to the operator, was on a dirt road, guarded by soldiers who were also manipulating objects inside at the time when he arrived.
Although the vehicle had the keys, one of the front tires, missing so it not be explICA did until that road dirt.
Inside the truck (whose objects of the interior were manipulated by the military, according to testimony of the crane operator) reported the discovery of a uniform of Navy Secretariat, which could be linked to a sailor who was assigned to Tamaulipas between 2012 and 2013, i.e., one year before the abduction of the engineer Herrera.
According to the Declaration of that marino, he surrendered his uniform worn in 2013, once he concluded his assignment in Tamaulipas and came out of the State, which, since then, was never again destacamentado.
The last doors proves that emphasizes, among the cluster of evidence collected over three years and means of investigation of this case, is a set of keys and key rings found by the Office of Tamaulipas in the housing located next to the headquarters of the 15 Infantry battalion, in Tamaulipas, where the engineer Herrera phone might be Geolocated for the second time the day of her abduction.
It is, explains the accomplished survey, a building adjacent to the fence of the barracks, which was painted with the same color as the military installations.
According to the survey, the property was uninhabited, although on a shelf were found keys and key chains, including the family of the engineer Herrera could recognize victim keychain.
After that discovery, the State Attorney’s Office let pass 48 hours to go to the home of engineer Herrera, to verify if those keys opened the gates, allowing you to check the victim, or his captors, if had been in the immovable aledaño headquarters military.
Finally, when the State Attorney’s Office went to the home of the engineer, to check if the keys opened the gates, met with that assurance seals had been broken, and the destroyed sheets, which prevented to perform the comparison.
Interestingly, the aim of violating the plates of the gates was not steal housing, since television, air conditioning and the sound system of the engineer, the only objects of value in the property, still remained there.
The State Attorney’s Office did not any act aimed to track fingerprints of people who destroyed the plates.
Given that scenario, the family proposed a second way to check if the keys were found in the adjacent to the military barracks building belonged to the engineer Herrera: compared with the set of keys from the House of the victim, that the same family had delivered to the MP when this authority put his house under guard.
However, the State Attorney’s Office informed them that they could not perform such confronts, since that copy of the keys to the House of the engineer (who the family had given to the MP) astray.
The present over two years, the PGR required the Army (through a dozen of trades) that will deliver the list of staff that was assigned to the 15 Battalion on 24 February 2015, as well as the parts of news and blog of the barracks without getting a response.
Finally, in January 2017, army officially announced to the PGR would not hand over this information (although the law obliges all government institutions deliver information required as part of their research to the public prosecutor’s Office), low the argument that it is “reserved for compromising national security”.
Acting in that response from the army, the PGR reported to the family of the engineer Herrera who had failed to gather enough information and that “is not possible to prove the probable responsibility of elements attached to the Ministry of national defense” in the Rapture.
In addition, it notified them and that this case can not be investigated as an “enforced disappearance of persons”, since said criminal demands participation, direct or indirect, by agents of the State. This, despite the accumulation of evidence gathered by the PGR, starting with the geolocation of the phones from the victim in two military barracks, after her abduction.
The argument of the PGR that ruled out the involvement of agents of the State in the Rapture is contradictory, since in the same notice clarifies that it can not investigate the army in this case, as “the common law authorities could also be involved in the” disappearance of Francisco Herrera”.
As shown in the preliminary State and federal investigations, the investigating authorities have not made any action aimed to determine whether, in addition to the army, other local authorities are “also” involved in this disappearance.
To know the position of the army around the abduction and disappearance of the engineer Francisco Herrera, Animal politician requested an interview with a representative of the Secretariat of national defense, without that response is obtained.
