TONATIERRA
Human Rights Commission
PO Box
24009 Phoenix, AZ 85074
www.tonatierra.org
Contact: Tupac Enrique Acosta
PRESS RELEASE
Comisión Permanente Ayotzinapa
TONATIERRA Submits Freedom of Information Request to the Biden administration for US government files on the investigation of the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students missing since September 26, 2014, in Mexico
September 24, 2021
Phoenix, Arizona – Today a Freedom of Information Act request was formally submitted to the Biden Administration by TONATIERRA and the WATER PROTECTOR LEGAL COLLECTIVE soliciting disclosure of the files related to the US government’s investigation into the Forced Disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College missing since September 26, 2014.
On May 24, 2021, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador communicated he had received files from the United States regarding the investigation of the 2014 Ayotzinapa disappearances and subsequent criminal coverup by officials at the highest levels of the Mexican government. President Lopez Obrador received these files after a virtual meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris on May 7, 2021.
In October of 2020, former Mexican defense minister Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration to face drug and money-laundering charges in the United States, according to a federal law enforcement official. General Cienfuegos was apparently known as “El Padrino,” or The Godfather, by one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels. Officials said General Cienfuegos directed military operations away from the criminal group in exchange for large sums of cash. But the Justice Department abruptly dropped the case against him in November, and he was allowed to return to Mexico.
In January 2021, the authorities in Mexico said they will bring no charges against General Cienfuegos.
Another former top Mexican official accused of compromising the Ayotzinapa investigation is living in refuge in Israel while an extradition case against him is mired in a diplomatic tussle over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
The Mexican authorities have accused the official, Tomás Zerón de Lucio, the former director of Mexico’s equivalent of the F.B.I., of abduction, torture and tampering with evidence in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, and of embezzling about $50 million in state funds in another case.
Israel has not acted on either the extradition request or the asylum claim, much to the consternation of Mexican officials, human rights organizations, and the families of the victims, who are still seeking the truth about their loved ones’ disappearance seven years ago on September 26, 2014.
The request for records to the US government submitted today under the Freedom of Information Act will hopefully shed light on how Tomás Zerón was able to travel from Mexico to Canada before fleeing to Israel, in spite of being the subject of an arrest warrant by a federal judge in Mexico. A request to the Canadian government regarding this issue on June 29, 2020 by the Indigenous Activist Network in Canada never received response from Prime Minister Trudeau.
Credible and corroborated reporting of the violent incident of September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero has established that the Mexican military was monitoring a clandestine shipment of heroin worth $2 million that was hidden in two buses on which the some of the students were traveling. The students were unaware of the smuggling operation. The heroin was to be delivered to the via the international drug cartel network to sites of distribution in Atlanta, Georgia and Chicago, Illinois.
Yet, over the past seven years, there has been no disclosure or information from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on what the role of the agency had prior, during, and subsequent to the Forced Disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the term Forced Disappearance refers to the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.
The crime of "Forced Disappearance" qualifies as a crime against humanity, not subject to a statute of limitations, in international criminal law. On 20 December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
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26 septiembre 2014 – 26 septiembre 2021
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