Almost 10 months after announcing it and nine months after being formalized in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF), the agreement signed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to release prisoners from federal prisons with more than 10 years without a sentence, adults over 75 years old, older adults suffering from chronic diseases and prisoners victims of torture has no beneficiary.
In response to different requests for public information, the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), in charge of Adán Augusto López, confirmed that the committee that will have to analyze the cases has not been installed – nor is there a date to do so – and although guidelines were issued for the benefit, there are no rules of operation because these must be approved by said committee.
“From its design it was already totally feasible to conclude that it was going to have absolutely no practical use for people to get out. In this sense, we are not surprised that it is not working, that people are not being released, what does cause us a lot of regret is that the president’s announcement in the morning and the issuance of the agreement itself generated many expectations among the victims of fabrication of culprits, among the victims of torture, “lamented Víctor del Pozo, lawyer in the Defense Area of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH).
Political Animal he sought the Segob to know the reasons why the committee has not been installed, but until the closing of the edition there was no response.
No results
On July 29, 2021, during his morning conference, the president informed that he would soon sign a decree – which was ultimately an agreement – so that people deprived of liberty who had more than 10 years in prison without sentence, adults over 75 years old, adults over 65 years old with a chronic illness and tortured people were released.
That morning, he even said: “Justice, as established by legal systems, must be swift, expeditious. How is a person going to be detained for more than 10 years without a sentence.”
A month later, on August 25, the DOF formalized the agreement that instructed the Ministries of the Interior and Of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), the latter through the Decentralized Administrative Body for Prevention and Social Readaptation, to implement the provisions of the agreement.
The Segob was to create the permanent and mandatory committee that would follow up on the files of the people who wanted to benefit from the agreement. To do this, in accordance with the transitory articles, the agency had three working days.
Once installed, you would have 15 more days to issue your operating rules. However, to date this has not happened, so no person deprived of liberty has been benefited.
Through requests for information, this media asked the Segob to know how many people had benefited from the agreement and to detail the causes of their release, that is, in which of the four recitals contemplated by the agreement their cases fell. It was also requested to know how many times the committee had met, but both requests had the same response: the committee has not been installed, there is no date to do so and there are no rules of operation.
“In this regard, it is reported that on March 24, 2022, the Head of the Justice System Support Unit sent the General Coordinator of Prevention and Social Readaptation of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection an email in order to be in a position to set the date of the session in which the Committee will be installed and in which the Operating Rules will also be approved. It is pertinent to clarify that this date has not been specified,” Segob reported in the response sent through the letter S.I. 330026222000559.
In that email, of which a copy was provided, Crescencio Jiménez Núñez, head of the Segob justice system support unit, sent Rubén Fernández, general coordinator of prevention and social rehabilitation of the SSPC, the final version of the Rules of Operation of the Permanent Monitoring Committee, so that they would already be in a position to set the date of installation and approval of the same. However, this has not happened.
Meanwhile, the Decentralized Administrative Body for Prevention and Social Readaptation reported in the letter PRS/OC/UNIT/0557/2022 that it has integrated some files of people who seek to benefit from the agreement, but that this analysis will be done until the installation of the committee.
“Now with regard to freedoms granted in the Federal Penitentiary Centers, it is reported that the respective files have been integrated, and once it is inststale the Committee of a Permanent nature, they will be analyzed and the procedures will be made before the corresponding judicial authorities, who are the ones empowered to deny or grant them, “he informed.
On September 14, also in a morning conference, the Secretary of the Interior celebrated that the state governments had endorsed the agreement and were implementing it in their states. In fact, he stated that the next day, 15 September, the first 682 people would be released; 36 of them, he said, corresponded to prisoners in federal prisons, but Segob herself does not know this information.
“It is reported that an exhaustive search was carried out in the physical and electronic files of the Justice System Support Unit, however, no documentary expression was located that accounts for the required information,” the agency reported in the response with folio 330026222000558, for which it was requested to know the detail of the released persons: entity, penitentiary center, sex and reason for release.
18 years in prison and no sentence
On the day that the president announced that this agreement was being worked on, the then Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, reported that in Mexico there were 94,547 incarcerated people who did not have a sentence, that is, 43% of the prison population was in preventive detention.
Of those people who do not have a sentence, 12,358 are for crimes of federal jurisdiction, while 82,189 are for crimes of the common jurisdiction.
Dulce María Obregón Cervantes, deprived of her liberty for 18 years without a sentence, is one of the people who, upon learning of this benefit, saw a possibility of getting out of prison and recovering her life, but the days go by and she is still behind bars.
On 16 February 2004, as she was returning from leaving her five-year-old in kindergarten, she was arrested. Some men asked her about a direction and when she least noticed she was already surrounded and in seconds they put her in a car.
In a telephone interview from Neza Sur prison, the woman said that without an arrest warrant she was arrested in the middle of the street. Hours later and after being tortured telling her that they would harm her son and his family, they told her that she was accused of the kidnapping of her former boss and his son, a fact that had happened two years ago.
He remembers that hours later an element of the extinct AFI told him: “The bosses already have me until the mother, we are already two years old, they want a payer of this kidnapping because they can not collect their insurance … of the company we had five people but the only one we located was you… You’ve already sucked.”
Two years earlier, she said, she worked at a clothing company where people came to kidnap the owner and his son. All employees, including her, were summoned as witnesses, so they gave their statement.
His former boss was released the next day and his son some time later.
Half a year after the events, the boss informed his workers that the factory, which by then was located in Tlalnepantla, State of Mexico, would close its doors and go to Toluca. Dulce remembers that she had to resign and went to work as a cashier in a self-service store. A year and a half later, she was arrested.
“They wanted me to record a video where I accepted the crime; they put me on a cardboard behind the camera what they wanted me to say and they got angry because I saw the cardboard and not the camera… they even slapped me because I never accepted it,” he said.
“(Later) they take me to an office where there were about 10 people, including my former boss, and the others were from the AFI. They sit me there in the middle and it is my former boss who starts interrogating me, not even the Public Ministry, and threatens me telling me to tell him where the safe house is (because) I had participated.”
At no time did she sign a statement accepting the crime of which she was accused. However, after hours they brought her some sheets on which they told her to put her footprints because with that they would release her. It didn’t.
“Those are supposed to be the statements I accept,” he said.
After 52 days rooted in a hotel in the Doctores neighborhood, 18 years in prison and a positive Istanbul Protocol in which it is confirmed that she was a victim of torture, Dulce demands that the authorities “apply their laws because they only say and promise, there is an amnesty or a decree that they are not really fulfilling as they should be; they publish it and even on TV it comes out, but they don’t really work on it.”
“If they really want to do justice, let them come to the prisons and really see. I want justice because, it sounds ugly, but here I left my best years when I didn’t commit anything,” he said.
In these 18 years, the five-year-old boy he left now is a young boyn of 23 who had to be raised by her grandmother, while her five brothers have looked for ways to support her by paying private lawyers who, she claims, have done nothing to help her.
In 2007, for example, one of the lawyers he had failed to deliver conclusions in his case and Dulce received a 36-year prison sentence. He appealed and that sentence was cancelled because his case was reopened.
In 2017, he was given the same sentence again and appealed again. Since that date her case is still open and she is without a sentence.
“They say that prison is for the poor and I can tell you that yes, I have seen many people who still pay and have money and leave … I will continue to fight until justice is done to me,” he said.
Recognize the fabrication of culprits
Víctor del Pozo, a lawyer at the CMDPDH, said that since the issuance of the agreement to release prisoners made official by the president, the failures in its implementation were noticed, particularly in the accreditation of torture.
In an interview, the expert considered that the authorities should look for ways to adopt a comprehensive state policy to deal with the manufacture of culprits.
A policy, he explained, in which people deprived of their liberty do not need a lawyer or an opinion as complex as the Istanbul Protocol, but that there is really a commitment to identify which people are unjustly detained and that they are granted some form of extinction of criminal action.
“It would be a way to release them and at the same time be accompanied by a recognition of innocence, that is not simply a pardon that ‘I, by my good grace, Executive Branch, I will let you go’, but that it is recognized that the people they have locked up are innocent and that they were somehow reached by the abusive and arbitrary hand of the State, that in the face of his inability to confront violence, he decides to manufacture culprits to inflate his figures, and that this is accompanied by a comprehensive reparation of the damage,” said the defender.
He added that the agreement issued by the Executive is based on a vision where torture is an exceptional situation, but the reality is that “there is a still indeterminate, but surely enormous, number of people unjustly deprived of their liberty as a result of the policies of manufacture of culprits that we have not only in Mexico City, but in all entities and at the federal level where most people have been victims of torture or arbitrary detention.”
Separately, Melissa Zamora, a lawyer at the Prodh Center, considered that the recognition by the Executive of the existence of torture and the seriousness of people spending so much time without a sentence is certainly positive, but not enough.
“We think it was very good, the first step is to recognize, that there is a look of understanding and sensitivity for people who are in prison for so long; however, it is not only about making a show of interest, but that this translates into sufficient resources and personnel. In this type of measure, it cannot apply a vision of austerity,” said the defender.
“In the end, it’s a matter of political will, but also of not seeing the dimension of this. As long as we have allegations of torture of persons deprived of their liberty, we are talking about a justice system without the capacity to actually investigate crimes, and hence torture is persistent in the context of detention or criminal investigation.”
What we do at Animal Político requires professional journalists, teamwork, dialogue with readers and something very important: independence. You can help us keep going. Be part of the team.
Subscribe to Animal Político, receive benefits and support free journalism.#YoSoyAnimal
