Despite AMLO’s order, the Sedena blocks the files on the “death flights”

MEXICO CITY (apro).– A few months before the mandate of the Commission for Access to the Truth about human rights violations committed during the so-called “Dirty War” ends, the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) has blocked access to its files to clarify facts such as the “flights of death,” denounced David Fernández Dávalos, a member of said commission.

During a conversation broadcast on the social networks of the Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), to elaborate on the making of the video “Flights of Death”, which recreates one of the methods used by the Army to disappear people during the 1970s, Fernández Dávalos pointed out that Sedena has violated at least four pieces of legislation, as well as the presidential decree of October 2021, which ordered all public bodies to provide information to the Truth Commission, without counting with which a collaboration agreement was signed.

Fernández Dávalos detailed how access to military documentation corresponding to its actions from 1965 to 1990, related to counterinsurgency policy, was obstructed, which was captured in a report “The Forms of Silence,” presented in October of last year.

Noting that in September of last year the Mechanism for Historical Clarification (MEH) decided to withdraw its researchers who were trying to review the Sedena files, information was requested via the Transparency Law.

“We presented 155 requests for information, in 70% of which the Sedena gave a negative response,” among them those related to “the death flights,” said Fernández Dávalos.

The Jesuit priest explained that, upon being aware that the Prodh Center had managed to integrate the military file against generals Francisco Quirós Hermosillo and Arturo Acosta Chaparro in the preliminary investigation into the disappearance of Alicia de los Ríos Merino, for the disappearance of people, opened in 2000 and closed in 2002, the MEH requested that document.

“We requested the complete file, we paid the fees for copies of the complete file, and a third part was delivered to us, in a censored version, with the commitment that the rest would be delivered to us.

“A month ago they informed us that two-thirds of the file would no longer be delivered to us because a preliminary investigation related to that case had been opened and that they were going to occupy the file, that in this way the file would become confidential. which is an invention of the Sedena,” he said.

The commissioner explained that they also requested “the list of the names of the people thrown into the sea in the ‘flights of death’, and what the Sedena responded is that there is no written testimony of what was requested,” when in the file included in During the preliminary investigation into the case of Alicia de los Ríos, there are testimonies from soldiers who maintain that the then Major Javier Barquín wrote down the names of the victims in a black notebook.

Fernández Dávalos recognized that, at the end of this administration, the Sedena and the National Intelligence Center (CNI), heir to the National Security Information Center (CISEN), will maintain a “debt” with the victims of the human rights violations committed. during the period from 1965 to 1990, attributed to law enforcement forces.

However, he said that the report that was delivered before the end of the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is 90% completed, and that most of its construction was done through testimonies from nearly a thousand people who They collaborated with the MEH.

“We have not made the content of the report known to anyone, we will do so after the elections, out of a commitment to prevent it from influencing the electoral process,” said the commissioner.

Regarding the mechanism of access to justice, Fernández Dávalos regretted that after its disintegration, due to the resignation of the investigators, the Undersecretariat of the Interior did nothing for a reconfiguration, so “the debt of achieving justice remains pending, therefore “It would be very important for the next administration to continue efforts to clarify these serious human rights violations.”

During the virtual forum, Alicia de los Ríos Merino, daughter of the member of the Communist League September 23, of the same name and who disappeared on January 5, 1978, called on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to hold a meeting with “ victims of survivors of the counterinsurgency, so that the president receives the communities and listens to the balance we have about his administration.”

Likewise, he asked the president to take the necessary measures so that the Truth Commission has access “in a dignified and full manner” to the information that the armed forces have about that period, and “to accept what happened decades ago together with the president who saw fit to decree the creation of the Truth Commission, so that it is not a pending issue that remains unanswered.”

In the same way, De los Ríos Merino asked the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic to, once and for all, collaborate with the Truth Commission, because “it has always excused its absence due to its autonomy,” despite having the obligation to conduct inspections at military installations.

The defender, a member of the Committee of Mothers of Disappeared Persons of Chihuahua, called on anyone who has information about the disappearances that occurred during the “dirty war” to share it anonymously in order to bring the victims’ relatives closer to the TRUE.

To share the information, interested parties can write to alicia.contacto@centroprodh.org.mx.

Irma and Irene De los Ríos Merino participated in the conversation; the video maker, Evan Grothan, from SITU Research, as well as Alan García from the Mexico office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH), as well as the lawyer from the Prodh Center, César Contreras.