Aristegui Noticias: The Sixth Military Court of the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA, Army), has aquitted six of the seven soldiers accused of participating in the masacre at
Tlatlaya of the charge of violation of military duties. The seventh defendant was sentenced to one year in military prison for the crime of disobedience, which he has already served. The ruling in favor of the soldiers only recently became known by the victim, Clara Gomez Gonzalez, who sought access by filing for an
amparo [
injunction] because of the opacity under which the case was processed.
MV Note: On June 30, 2014, soldiers killed twenty-two civilians, suspected criminals, in a warehouse in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico. The army report said the soldiers had been fired on while on patrol. Journalistic investigations revealed that the soldiers had initiated the attack on the warehouse and when the civilians surrendered, they were summarily executed and the scene modified to make it look like they had died in the fire fight.
Clara Gomez Gonzalez was one of two women who had been kidnapped by the criminals and who was initially arrested as a presumed member of the gang. She was tortured to support the Army's version of events. Released, she testified that some men were executed by the soldiers after they surrendered.
This was revealed in a joint statement by the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, Article 19, Amnesty International and other social action organizations, which noted that the case "is on track to go unpunished."
"The exemption of the defendants by the military court confirms their bias and the limitations of the recent reform of the military justice. Given that it allows parallel trials being conducted simultaneously in civil and military courts, it consolidates the impunity in one of the most serious cases of violations of the right to life in recent history," they said.
MV Note: In September 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that when military personnel are accused of crimes against civilians, they must be tried in civilian rather than military courts. In May of 2014, the Congress approved changes in the military code of justice and the Federal Code of Criminal Procedures to implement this ruling.
The soldiers involved in the Tlatlaya killings were charged with murder in civilian courts and with military disobedience in military courts. Four of the seven have been freed by the civilian court of charges of murder, so only three remain charged.
Meanwhile, the organizations lamented
"the omissions of the Attorney General of the Republic" that "as in other cases of serious human rights violations", fragmented the investigation, "initiated several preliminary investigations and has been reluctant to fully investigate all members of the Army who could have been involved in the events."
However, they recalled that various criminal proceedings continue to be open.
"In the federal civil criminal court, three soldiers are charged with murder and the PGR still maintains open the preliminary investigation in which it has been requested to investigate the chain of command regarding the order of abatir [take down, take out, eliminate, the order given soldiers in the unit involved] and, additionally, compliance by the military courts to the amparo won by Clara Gómez González has not been fulfilled to make the facts known, so the matter has recently been referred to the Supreme Court."
Spanish original