Femicide torture case in Chihuahua heads to OAS

October 15, 2008
Women’s/Human Rights News
Femicide Torture Case Heads to OAS
By Lourdes Gonzalez Leal
Frontera NorteSur
A long-running case of state torture and legal chicanery related to the Chihuahua City women’s killings could end up in the Organization of American States (OAS) soon. This week, the Mexico City-based Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (CMDPDH) announced it will take the case of David Meza Argueta to the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. during the December-January time period. The human rights commission regularly makes recommendations to the Mexican government and other member states of the OAS system.
In 2003, Chihuahua City state police agents arrested Meza and accused himof the murder of his 19-year-old cousin, Neyra Azucena Cervantes. Thesuspected body of the young computer school student and retail shop employee was discovered on the Cuernos de Luna hill outside Chihuahua Cityin July 2003. Together with Neyra, the remains of another missing young woman, Minerva Torres, were recovered at the crime scene but concealed from family members for two years by Chihuahua state authorities.
Subsequent probes by the official Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission and other investigators applying the international Istanbul Protocol supported Meza’s contention that he had been tortured and forced into making a false confession by Chihuahua State Judicial Police officers then under the command of the late Vicente Gonzalez and former State Attorney General Jose “Chito” Solis.
Chihuahua Judge Aram Delgado declared Meza innocent in 2006, but only after the young man had spent nearly three years in prison for a crime he said he did not commit. Meza’s case attracted international attention, prompting protests outside Mexican consulates by Mexico solidarity groups abroad.
Although Meza is free, the CMDPDH, supported by the Chihuahua-based Justice for Our Daughters organization, contends that justice is far from being served in the case.
The human rights advocacy organization said it will seek recommendations from the Inter-American Commission to compensate Mesa for his torture and prison time, to publicly recognize the injustice, to investigate and prosecute the torturers, to enact legal mechanisms to prevent similar episodes from occurring in the future, and to carry out an investigation of Neyra’s murder.
“It is also grave and worrisome that the investigation to get the real perpetrators of Neyra Azucena Cervantes’ murder remains without any advance, permitting impunity,” the CMDPDH said in a statement.
“It is inadmissible that after the liberation of Mr. Meza Argueta, the state attorney general’s office is still analyzing the case file without clearly defining the lines of investigation they will follow…”
The CMDPDH contended the Cuerno de la Luna case was linked to a third killing, the Rosalba Pizarro Ortega murder, as well as to the disappearances two young women still missing, Yesenia Concepcion Vega and Julieta Marlen Gonzalez.
Similar to some femicide victims in Ciudad Juarez, many of the Chihuahua City victims had connections to computer schools or were last seen in the downtown section of their city. According to the CMDPDH, Chihuahua state attorney general’s office investigator Sandra Delgado initially uncovered leads pointing to the involvement of organized crime in the Chihuahua City disappearances and murders but the evidence was quietly tucked away and not pursued.
It’s important to note that Neyra Azucena Cervante’s murder occurred more than two years after the first wave of disappearances and the state attorney general’s office.
In its statement, the CMDPDH urged Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza and State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez to compensate Meza and his family for their suffering and to finally clear up the Neyra Azucena Cervantes murder and other femicides. There was no immediate public reaction from Chihuahua state officials to the CMDPDH’s statement.
Sources: Mexican Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights,October 13, 2008. Press statement. Cimacnoticias.com, October 14, 2008.
Article by Lourdes Gonzalez Leal.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
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