MEXICO CITY (CN) - A federal judge in Mexico has ruled the Mexican Army must make public the 853 missing files obtained in 2014 by the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center - a military intelligence unit that monitored organized criminal activity during the time of the Sept. 26, 2014, kidnapping of 43 students in the town of Iguala, Guerrero.
Parents of the students filed an Amparo lawsuit, designed to protect individuals from abuse of power, in 2023 against the Mexican military for violating a 2018 Presidential Decree that created the multi-institutional Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case. The decree obligated all institutional powers to collaborate and cooperate with the Ayotzinapa investigation.
In their sixth and final report in July 2023, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, a different committee tasked with investigating human rights atrocities, found that the Mexican military withheld information and evidence in the Ayotzinapa case, making the forced disappearance a state crime.
"The case stemmed from a reflection by the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who saw an unfavorable institutional situation regarding the release of that information by the Ministry of National Defense," said Ivette Estefania Galvan Garcia, coordinator of the comprehensive defense area of the Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, or PRODH as it is more commonly known. "The case at that moment was going through the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case but it no longer functioned as a mechanism that allowed access to information. It indicated more an institutional paralysis."
That trial culminated on Feb. 19, when Mexico City Fifth District Judge Alan Arriola Padilla ordered Mexico's Ministry of National Defense to hand over this information, which include the 853 missing files.
"The military authorities were very active during the proceedings. They said those files don't exist, they're not related to the case, that they already delivered all the information, et cetera," said Galvan Garcia, whose group announced the ruling Wednesday. "And this ruling vindicates the families because it directly supports their claim regarding what the independent experts said in their sixth report: that an unspecified number of pages were missing from the military authorities, formerly belonging to the Ministry of National Defense, and also an addendum issued by the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case in October of that same year, which accounted for another 18 pages.
"Furthermore, based on army regulations that dictate how documents must be filed, numbered, and so on, I can confirm that these files exist and that they must be given to the families because it's about guaranteeing their right to the truth as victims of serious human rights violations, and also about society's right to know what happened," she said.
Galvan Garcia said that though this is a large step in the process to finding truth about the Ayotzinapa atrocity, it doesn't mean the files will be available overnight.
"It's a ruling from a district court, which is, let's say, the first step in the federal justice system. The authorities can still appeal these rulings from a lower court," she said.
In her morning press conference on Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum briefly remarked when asked about the ruling that she was not aware of it but did say that later in March she will meet with the Ayotzinapa families where hopefully a plan will be put in place for the release of the information.
"This information has now been stated as existing by a federal authority and according to the records-because of the internal guidelines that exist- of the armed forces, specifically the Secretary of National Defense, and they are obligated to hand it over," said Galvan Garcia.
Claire Dorfman, assistant director of the Mexico Documentation Project at the National Archive, hopes that the information will eventually be revealed but knows it could be a long process.
"The 853 documents the military continues to withhold from the families of the 43 students and investigators are a stark reminder of the impunity enjoyed by the armed forces in Mexico. We saw the same situation with the Truth Commission on the Dirty War; the Mexican military's refusal to fully open their archives has a profound impact on accountability and justice for grave violations of human rights," she said in a statement to Courthouse News.
The National Security Archive's Mexico Project has investigated the Ayotzinapa case since 2015. On the 11th anniversary of the disappearances last year, they published hundreds of text messages intercepted by the DEA that point to extensive corruption and complicity of the military in the attacks on the students.
It has been over 11 years since 43 students at a rural teacher's college in Ayotzinapa were forcibly disappeared on the night of Sept. 26, 2014.
Years of independent and government reports show police opened fire on the students after they commandeered buses to visit Mexico City for the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre - a nonviolent political tactic that had become a tradition in the state of Guerrero. Police then handed the students over to the drug gang, Guerreros Unidos.
To this day, only three students' remains have been identified. Only during the last year were two people criminally convicted in connection with the students' disappearance, though they received lenient sentences through plea deals.
Source: Courthouse News Service
