FIDH files the first complaint before the IACHR for acts of corruption against the State of Mexico.

FIDH, Familias Unidas en la Búsqueda y Localización de Personas Desaparecidas de Piedras Negras e IDHEAS, and Litigio Estratégico en Derechos Humanos, presented yesterday a complaint (petition) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for acts of corruption, torture and enforced disappearance in Coahuila between 2009 and 2016. This petition is filed in the context of the detention of Jorge Juan Torres López, former governor of Coahuila and alleged perpetrator of human rights violations currently in an extradition process to the US rather than facing investigation and standing trial in Mexico.

The lack of information on the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared as well as the absence of diligent and effective judicial investigation to bring perpetrators of those crimes to justice, have led family members of victims of enforced disappearance to file the petition during a meeting with the Executive Secretary of the IACHR.

The petition presents 20 emblematic cases that occurred in Coahuila between 2009 and 2016. It includes victims of the Allende massacre, people illegally cremated in the Piedras Negras detention center controlled by the Zetas drug cartel, disappeared persons who were arrested by the Coahuila police and then handed over to that cartel, as well as people tortured and disappeared by the special forces of Coahuila.

The petition also focuses on acts of corruption that have enabled the Zetas to take over the local authorities, particularly the public force in Coahuila between 2009 and 2012. For all those facts, the family members request the IACHR to declare the Mexican State responsible for serious human rights violations committed in Coahuila.

According to the most recent figures provided by the National Search Commission, between 2006 and 2018 there have been 40,180 disappearances in Mexico. The organisations and victims fronting this petition are especially concerned about the situation of the families of the victims of enforced disappearance in Coahuila and in Mexico. In Coahuila alone, there are more than 800 unidentified bodies and according to the process of the State exhumation plan, it will take over 20 years to exhume those bodies. In addition, forensic laboratories are not accepting remains located in clandestine graves because the process of recovery supported by the State does not respect the chain of custody.

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