The defense of five of the 10 accused of the collapse of an elevated section of Line 12 of the capital’s Metro asked the Attorney General’s Office (FGJCDMX) to desist from the hearing scheduled for this Monday, June 6, until the lack of maintenance is included as a line of investigation and is summoned to testify, among other officials, Florencia Serranía, former director of the Collective Transport System.
Gabriel Regino, lawyer for Enrique Horcasitas, former director of the Metro Project, and the other four former officials named, reported that the request to the FGJCDMX was made last week and that so far he has not had a response. For this reason, he reproached that the authorities carry out an investigation process that to date he considers partial.
“It is a fact that the lack of inspection and maintenance is a crucial subject of investigation to properly delineate the responsibilities in this terrible tragedy, as concluded at the time by the Norwegian company DNV. The expert reports hired by the prosecutor’s office agree on the lack of inspection and the lack of maintenance of the work,” the defender argued.
This does not exclude the hypothesis that the collapse is related to errors in design and construction “that are the responsibility of the construction consortium solely and exclusively,” Regino said.
“The fact that the lack of maintenance inspections is insisted on is because it is proven that the affectations, that the buckling of the area, were already detectable and visible years before and that, since the inspections and the corresponding maintenance have not been carried out, we were facing the chronicle of a tragedy announced.”
In an interview with Political Animal, the lawyer recalled that the Government of Mexico City, headed by Claudia Sheinbaum, carried out an inspection of the elevated viaduct of the “Gold Line” with drones in December 2019. Then, Regino insisted, it is noted that despite this evidence “this administration folded its arms and did absolutely nothing and that implies criminal responsibility.”
“That is why we have asked the Prosecutor’s Office of Mexico City to desist from the hearing requested to impute those who managed the budget of the work, which has nothing to do with supervision and construction, so that it desists from that hearing and that, with strict adherence to impartiality, exhaust that line of investigation of the lack of inspection, the lack of maintenance that has been proven in the file that she created, “he added.
The repeated refusal by the prosecutor’s office not to add this line of investigation, he charged, confirms that what is sought is to cover up officials of the current capital administration.
Pending the response to his request for withdrawal, the lawyer and his clients will appear this Monday at the still initial hearing that on four different occasions has been postponed.
There, Regino said, he will ask the judge that the impartiality of the investigation is being violated.
This Monday, and after the newspaper The Country reported that independent opinions contracted by the FGJCDMX conclude that the collapse that claimed the lives of 26 people and left 104 injured is related to the lack of maintenance, the prosecution maintained that it is “subjective and partial” information.
“To allude to what is referred to in the aforementioned documentation, in fragments, without context and integral information of the investigation, is biased, subjective and partial,” Ulises Lara, spokesman for the FGJCDMX, told the media.
He insisted on ensuring that the conclusions of the opinions commissioned indicate that the cause of the collapse was the errors in the construction and that in the hearing next Monday the imputation to the 10 indicated will be sought.
“In the next hearing, to be held on Monday, June 6, this prosecutor’s office, through the Public Prosecutor’s Office, will make the corresponding accusations, which it determined to carry out, after integrating into the investigation folder not only four opinions, but thousands of proceedings, as well as hundreds of laboratory tests and studies, in the matters of criminalistics, photography, video, architecture, civil engineering in bridges and mechanics, industrial and structural safety, topography and geotechnics, mainly,” said Lara.
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