In just one week and in two separate hearings, four men accused of kidnapping, allegedly members of “La Línea,” were released by two state control judges who pointed out inconsistencies in the police actions that led to the arrests.
Under criminal cases 5412/2024 and 5413/2024, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Specialized Prosecutor for Strategic Operations (FEOE) sought to have the arrest and detention of four men declared legal: Jesús Javier TA in the first case, and Martín RR, Fidel MP and Jonathan Gabriel GM in the second, without success.
They did not go beyond the first stage, after which formal charges are filed and a formal investigation is requested against the accused.
The first criminal case was handled by Judge Fabiola Domínguez Chavira, who questioned the rapid response times of various corporations such as the National Guard and the Ministry of National Defense to a call for help from a victim.
He also inferred a possible setup in the approved police report that was presented as evidence to confirm the legality of the arrest.
Although the formulation of the charge was not carried out because it was a stage after the arrest was taken, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office shared with El Diario that in this criminal case the victim is a woman in a mobility context who, in addition to the illegal deprivation of liberty and the request for a payment for her release (which constitutes the crime of kidnapping), was sexually assaulted. Hence the aggravating factor.
Those involved in the second criminal case would also be accused of aggravated kidnapping, although in this case to the detriment of a man originally from Veracruz and resident in Ciudad Juárez for years, who was asked for two sports cars for his release, a crime for which Luis Donaldo MR, alias “El Sultán”, was also charged, alleged leader of a criminal cell dedicated to kidnappings and, in addition, to contract killings, according to data from the State Attorney General’s Office, which links him to a multiple homicide with three victims that occurred on October 1, 2023.
Two different criminal cases arose from this investigation file, which were later combined for better control. Case 5413/2024 was against the three released men, and case 5363/2024 was against MR. In this case, the presiding judge was Lorenzo Armando Villar Chavarría.
In both cases, the judges separately stated that it is not credible that, when there is a call for help from a victim, various corporations will respond to the call.
Also, that the state police as first responders, staged the approved police report, without having any objective data to reach such a conclusion, other than their sole, and highly subjective, criteria.
One of the judges said he believes that the arrests on weekends are due to possible bonuses that are given to corporations for presenting work, an argument that is also highly subjective, since in addition to not existing, he bases it on his assessment.
And she also does not believe it is possible to read rights to an injured person and for him to understand them, because for her he would have to be unconscious, an argument also based on her subjective criteria.
“It is not possible for police officers to leave the victim in an ambulance to follow an aggressor,” Judge Dominguez said in one of the cases.
On September 5, the day MR was arraigned, the newspaper reported that on August 27 at around 7:30 p.m. while the victim with the initials JAPV was on his way to visit a friend in the Misiones neighborhood of Creel, he was intercepted by three men aboard a sand-colored pickup truck and forced to board at gunpoint.
Later, they asked for his mother’s phone number and called her to inform her that she had to tell “her son’s girl” to give her two cars that she had just bought, a Chevrolet Corvette and a Camaro.
For the next few days, the victim remained deprived of his liberty in a house on Gabino Barreda Street in the Bellavista neighborhood, where he was repeatedly beaten with boards on the buttocks, hit with batons on various parts of the body and even burned with cigarettes, lighters and homemade flamethrowers.
On August 31, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Strategic Operations of the State Attorney General’s Office reported the rescue of the victim, and the next day the arrest of MR, to then execute an arrest warrant, so the detention control was not necessary.
After the illegality of the arrest of RR, MP and GM was declared, Fidel MP was arrested again just after leaving the court premises in response to another arrest warrant in force against him, also for the crime of kidnapping, although under a different criminal case that will be resolved as to whether or not he will be brought to trial on Monday at 9:30 in the morning.
Kidnappings are on the rise
Since 2022, the crime of kidnapping in Ciudad Juárez has increased radically compared to previous years, according to data available since 2015 through the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
Between January and July 2024, 23 kidnappings were reported in Ciudad Juárez alone. In that period but in 2023, there were 18 cases. In 2015, there was no incidence of this crime; in 2016 there was only one case, the same as in 2017. For 2018 the figure was three, then six in 2019, seven in 2020, 15 in 2021 and nine in 2022.
The Specialized Prosecutor’s Office has reported that although in 2023 and early 2024 the kidnappings focused on people in a context of mobility given the high flows that arrived at this border, later this year a possible evolution of the crime was announced but a regression in time to the kidnapping of local businesspeople, which in July was confirmed with the kidnapping of a businesswoman who owned a garden terrace for which 2.5 million pesos were requested in exchange for her freedom, as opposed to between one thousand and five thousand dollars that were requested per migrant person, according to information gathered in court hearings by this medium.
All groups commit it
The same information from the court hearings has allowed us to know that kidnapping is not an activity of a particular criminal group, as cases have been pointed out such as that of the rapper “Fat Flow”, alleged member of “La Empresa”; the group “Los Mexicles”, with alleged relation to the kidnapping of the businesswoman, and “La Línea”, to which “El Sultán” supposedly belongs.
The journalistic archive indicates that “El Sultán” has had criminal activity since at least 2016 in the theft of a private transport vehicle with a digital application, an act for which he was arrested by means of an arrest warrant in 2017.
Later, in 2023, he was arrested on October 6 by the State Police in alleged connection with the multiple homicide in Praderas del Sol on October 1. On the day of the arrest, it was reported that “in the streets of the Jardines del Aeropuerto neighborhood, security agents located (…) a Mini Cooper vehicle that was trying to evade the authorities”, in which MR and José Guadalupe CE were traveling, and from whom two long weapons, two short weapons, four magazines, 28 ammunition, 44 packages with drugs, a pistol holster and almost five thousand 500 pesos were seized. The vehicle was located inside the crime scene with multiple fatalities.
Finally, both were charged solely with crimes against health and against the Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives, under criminal case 5492/2023 in the Bravos Judicial District, along with two other men who were identified by the SSPE in criminal case 5491/2023 –also for crimes against health–, but as part of the criminal cell that was in charge of the multiple homicide.
Regarding the charges of wilful homicide, the District Attorney’s Office for the Northern Zone has not reported to date any arrest warrants in this regard against possible perpetrators.
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