Mexico’s Navy Secretariat (Semar) offered a public apology to the families of people who were disappeared by naval elements in Nuevo Laredo at an event in the border municipality’s Plaza 1 de Mayo. In response, the families of the victims demanded an end to the criminalization against them and the lawyer Raymundo Ramos Vázquez, president of the Human Rights Committee that represents them.
In the presence of the families of the 45 people who were disappeared, Jessica Molina Rodríguez, wife of José Daniel Trejo García, one of the victims, warned that not all the women seekers agreed to accept the Mexican State’s apology, but they agreed to continue together in demanding justice, truth and non-repetition. In addition, he noted that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has not followed up on the complaint against the licensed mayor of Nuevo Laredo, Enrique Rivas Cuellar, for the use of cloned vans linked to the disappearances, among other complaints and cases presented.
“Today I share the feeling of my companions, and although a public apology does not erase the suffering and anguish that we have had to live, but at least it allows us to continue as we do today, walking with our heads held high, without hiding our faces, it gives us the peace of mind of knowing that now not only we know that we always said true: it was the sailors. I hope that with this apology the smear campaign against us and Mr. Raymundo Ramos, who has had to put up with the slander against him, will cease,” Molina Rodríguez said.
Read: ‘It was the sailors’: FGR investigates navy elite group for disappearance of 47 people in Nuevo Laredo
Rear Admiral Ramiro Lobato Camacho, representing the head of the Secretariat of the Navy, Admiral José Luis Arellano Ruiz, said that the acceptance of Recommendation 36VG/2020 for serious human rights violations issued by the National Human Rights Commission sets a historical precedent in this type of events, where elements of the Mexican State are responsible.
“We know that no word that is said here today can redeem the harm to which the victims have been subjected but we are clear that this is the route to a truth that dignifies them, in addition to providing comfort, attention and support to those affected as far as our institution is concerned. In the same way and above all, it is a precedent towards a strict surveillance of naval operations and respect for human rights in our country,” the naval official said.
The event was attended by José Ramón Ibarra Flores, secretary of the nuevo laredo city council; Rodolfo Monroy Velázquez, representing the government of Tamaulipas; Octavio Amezcua
representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; Rosalba Zárate Quintana, coordinator of the CNDH’s remediation monitoring program; and Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez, undersecretary of human rights, population and migration of the Ministry of the Interior.
“The Mexican State, today through Rear Admiral Lovato, has conveyed an irrefutable message, we will continue to face this serious problem without bending, without simulation, and with all the firmness of the State to mitigate and punish it,” undersecretary Encinas said.
Read: ‘It’s a simulation, they don’t want to investigate the Navy,’ they denounce the case of 27 disappearances in Nuevo Laredo
On April 9, 2021, Semar handed over 30 naval elements to the FGR for their alleged involvement in the enforced disappearance of persons in Nuevo Laredo from February to May 2018. On Thursday, April 15, a federal judge linked all the sailors to trial, but only for the disappearances of José Daniel Trejo García and Gabriel Gaspar Vázquez.
The court remanded all sailors in custody and set a further investigation period of 6 months. The arrests are part of criminal cases 155/2020, 307/2020 and 308/2020, which correspond to 4 victims of the same crime, although the Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee, led by lawyer Raymundo Ramos, documented 45 enforced disappearances allegedly at the hands of the military.
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