Mexico City.- The Supreme Court of Justice today ordered reopening the investigation into the illegal detention and torture of four relatives of guerrilla leader Lucio Cabañas at the hands of federal agents, during the so-called Dirty War of the 1970s.
By four votes to one, the First Chamber of the Court protected Juana, Rosa Elena and Irene Nava Cabañas, as well as Flavia Cabañas Gómez, against a non-exercise of criminal action determined by the FGR in January 2022.
The majority determined that the temporary forced disappearance of the complainants at the hands of agents of the defunct Federal Directorate of Security (DFS) and the military, as well as the torture against them, are crimes against humanity that do not prescribe and can be punished, despite because they were not classified in Mexican criminal law at that time.
The investigation into the cause of this protection began in 2015, as a derivation of those opened in 2002 by the special prosecutor’s office that the then president Vicente Fox created to investigate crimes of the Dirty War, which even accused former president Luis Echeverría of genocide, but beyond of political noise, he only achieved a conviction against a former DFS agent.
Due to the time that has passed, around 50 years, it is most likely that those involved have already died. The DFS, for example, has not existed since 1985.
Even so, the Court held today that the reported conduct was already considered crimes against humanity under international law when it was committed, rejecting allegations by the FGR regarding prescription and retroactive application of the law.
“It would not be sustainable to maintain that crimes against humanity, since there is no criminal offense that exactly describes these crimes as such at the time of the events in the Mexican legal order, this implies a violation of the provisions of article 14, first paragraph. , of the Constitution,” says the project of Minister Juan Luis González Alcántara.
He also clarified that in this case the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force in Mexico in 2006, cannot be applied retroactively, as stated by the judge who protected the Cabañas in the first instance.
In addition, the Court declared an adhesive review of the complainants justified so that the FGR has collaboration with other authorities and can carry out a broader investigation.
“The State must ensure not only that the authorities in charge of the investigation (Public Ministry) have at their disposal the necessary means to carry out those actions, but that they are actually used to carry out the investigations promptly,” says the ruling, emphasize the victims’ right to the truth.
In December 2021, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador created a commission for the historical clarification of serious human rights violations between 1965 and 1990, which was headed by the then Undersecretary of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas.
Said commission proposed in 2023 to create a “special unit for litigation and trial” of these cases, which does not exist to date.
Lucio Cabañas, a rural professor at the Ayotzinapa Normal School, founded the Poor People’s Party in Guerrero in 1967, as well as its armed wing, the Peasant Brigade of Execution, whose most famous act was the kidnapping of the then senator and PRI chieftain Rubén Figueroa in 1974.
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