The CNDH points to the Navy for another disappearance in Guanajuato

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued a recommendation in which it singles out the Secretariat of the Navy (Semar) for the disappearance of a young man in Irapuato, Guanajuato. This is Sergio Banda Delgado, who was 25 years old when he was captured by naval elements in the Purísima del Jardín colony in Irapuato, on November 9, 2018.
The facts, which have already been revealed by Political Animal, are part of a wave of disappearances perpetrated in Guanajuato at the end of 2018 and attributed to the Navy. This is the same year in which at least 47 people were disappeared in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in events that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) also links to elements of the Navy. Families of the Nuevo Laredo victims suspect that some of the officers who were stationed in the border city were later sent to Guanajuato. 
The disappearance of Sergio Banda Delgado took place around 9:30 p.m. on November 9, 2018. According to his mother, he told the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Guanajuato, elements of the Navy captured him along with another person in the Purísima del Jardín de Irapuato neighborhood. The other young man was later released, while Banda Delgado did not return.

The survivor reported being tortured by officers. Specifically, he said they were “detained, taken to a dirt road, beaten and interrogated by Semar personnel. In particular, they sprinkled sauce on his face and tried to suffocate him on several occasions until they finally threw him in a river; while the other person was taken away, without his whereabouts being known so far.”
Cristina Delgado, mother of the disappeared, said in an interview with Political Animalor in August 2021, after the disappearance, he filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office and tried to look for his son by asking the sailors deployed in the area. All he managed to do was get an officer to confirm that there had been an operation and that arrests had been made. From then on, only promises. “They tell us that they are investigating, that they send trades, that it is slow,” he said.
Read: Navy adds 185 victims of human rights violations

Semar rejected his participation in the events, according to the CNDH. The Navy is analyzing the recommendation and does not yet have a position on it. The previous one was rejected at first and, a month later, accepted, without giving explanations about what motivated the change.
“Evidence in the complaint file indicated the participation of naval personnel in the arbitrary detention of the victim and his companion while they were walking in the vicinity of their homes,” the CNDH contradicted.
In its recommendation, the institution directed by Rosario Piedra Ibarra considers it accredited that the victims were detained by naval elements, whose uniforms read the legend “Marina” and were traveling in official vehicles. This was also corroborated by images of security cameras in the area, which captured the traffic of vehicles of these characteristics in the area where the young people were captured. 
The cameras were also key to accrediting the responsibility of the sailors in the disappearance of Christian Giovanny Martínez Juárez, which occurred a month earlier and also certified by the CNDH. Despite the evidence, the Navy also denied in this case its participation in the events. 
“According to what was stated by the victim’s companion, the arrest was made without the elements of the Semar showing an arrest warrant or there being criminal flagrante delicto and they were not made available to any authority, as established by the regulations on the matter,” the CNDH said.
“The National Commission had sufficient evidence to determine that one of the detainees was a victim of enforced disappearance and his companion of arbitrary detention and illegal deprivation of liberty, even though he was released on the same day, and even though there is not enough evidence to confirm acts constituting torture against him, this autonomous body recognizes his status as a victim,” he says.
The CNDH urged the Navy to repair the damage, including compensation to the victim’s family. In turn, he will file a complaint with the FGR and with the General Control of the Navy. 
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Original source in Spanish