Durango state FGE says 10 lawyers are missing

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Durango state Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso told the press Monday that the number of lawyers missing in Durango was 10 not 100 to 120, according to news reports.

A news report which appeared in Milenio news daily said that  de la Garza Fragoso admitted to the press that 120 incidents or reports have been received concerning missing lawyers, some of them are minor incidents such as accident investigations, and that the number of actual cases of missing lawyers is 10.

Fiscalia de la Garza Fragoso's denied a report by Durango state Barra de Abogados or bar association president Martha Alicia Gurrola of the number of missing lawyers was as many as 120.

According to a separate news account in Milenio, Señora Alicia Gurrola said that them number of dead or missing was rumored to be as many as 120, but also said that the numbers she had were unclear.

Many of the 10 missing are those who went missing over the previous four years well  before de la Garza Fragoso's term which began in mid 2011.  Her term began as the mass graves in Durango, most of them in Durango city began to be uncovered.  The final toll of the exhumations was 330.  Many of those dead were in other places in Durango state as well as far away at the Durango side of La Laguna, and some of the dead were reported missing as far back as 2007, when Felipe Calderon began his war on the drug cartels..

The news report said that most of the 10 missing lawyers could be amongst the 330 found in Durango in 2011-2012.

Señora Alicia Gurrola lamented in a third Milenio article which was published last Saturday that  de la Garza Fragoso had not met with the  Barra de Abogados in six months to provide help in security.

The most famous case of a lawyer disappearing in Durango took place in late 29011, when  de la Garza Fragoso's predecessor, Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre was kidnapped and murders in Durango city in March of 2012.  At a presentation with the Durango state Chamber of Deputies at the time,  de la Garza Fragoso admitted pulling state paid Ortiz Aguirre's security detail only hours before the murder.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

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La Laguna ranked 4th in homicides as 4 more die

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Despite  the seemingly good news a few days ago of a dramatic drop in homicides from the Coahuila Procuraduria General de Justicia del Estado (PGJE), in the first two months of 2014, according to a group in Mexico the La Laguna region registered the fourth highest murders in Mexico nationwide in 2013, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news dispatch posted on the online edition of El Diario de Coahuila news daily, the group El Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano de Seguridad, Justicia y Legalidad (CCI)  said that murder rates have dropped from 2012 to 2013, 35.9% in the Durango side and in La Laguna Metropolitan Area fell 42.4%.

Despite the drop in homicides, according to the group, murder rates have risen seven percent in 2013 in all of Coahuila state when compared with 2012. 

Marco Zamarripa, director of the La Laguna Consejo Civico de las Instituciones (CCI-Laguna), was quoted in the report saying there is a large information gap in gaining crime statistics in the region.  The CCI-Laguna says on their Facebook page they are a non-government organization. 

Marco Zamarripa may have been referring to the Coahuila PGJE report last week, which has been no help as in the past that office has cooked statistics to make crime statistics appear more moderate.

La Laguna is a metropolitan area consisting of several municipalities from eastern Durango state and western Coahuila state.  Police operations even with federal support have failed in the region because of jurisdictional problems between the two states and among the several municipalities which compose La Laguna.  The three largest municipalities in the region include Torreon, Coahuila and Lerdo and Gomez Palacio, both of Durango.

Four individuals were killed in the La Laguna region since last Saturday according to Mexican news reports.

Three victims were found aboard a Ford Explorer midnight Saturday by local police in Lerdo municipality, according to a news report which appeared in El Siglo de Durango news daily.

The victims were two men and a female, one of the men of which was identified as Ricardo Marquez Rivera, 25.  They were found in ejido El Huarache on Avenida San Carlos in Benito Juárez colony. The location where the dead were found was near the Coahuila-Durango border.

Meanwhile in Gomez Palacio, Durango a bus driver was shot and later died Sunday, according to a separate news account which appeared in El Siglo de Durango.

The victim was identified as  Gregorio Lopez Mireles, 56, who was driving a bus between Gomez Palacio and Tlahualilo, near ejido  Arturo Martinez Adame.  An armed suspect shot the victim in an apparent robbery attempt.

According to data supplied by El Siglo de Durango, a total of 22 individuals have been murdered since the start of the year in the Durango side of La Laguna, including the three found in ejido El Huarache, but apparently not including the bus driver killed last Sunday.

In January, nine men died, while in February eight men and two women were reportedly killed in the region.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and Borderlandbeat.com he can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

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Mexico begins squaring military law with court rulings

Senadora Gonzalez Gomez

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Almost two and a half years after the July 2011 decision by the Mexican Suprema Cort de Justicia de la Nacion (SCJN) that international treaty obligation concerning human rights can take precedence over Mexican law, talks and committee meetings between military and senators continue that could lead to laws that balance Mexican law with international law, according to Mexican press accounts.

A news report which appeared in the online edition of Milenio news daily said that several military staff admitted that the nature of fighting against narcotraffickers has let to some human right violations, and have been "inevitable".

The lead in the senate to deal with military justice reform is Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) senator Arely Gomez Gonzalez, who has been holding hearings on this as well as other legal reforms since last fall.  But these meetings were not the first.  A quick meeting just after the 2011 SCJN decision was held between senators and the military.

Last September, according to a news account which appeared in El Mexicano news daily, the senator declared that five meeting between senators and Mexico's senior military staff would take place to discuss "the balance between the protection of human rights and military discipline, with all the practical consequences that this entails..."

In Friday's meeting military staff from the Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), the controlling agency for the Mexican Army and Secretaria de Marina (SEMAR) have both admitted that human rights violations, while rare have occurred in the past.

Contradmirante Alejandro Vazquez Hernandez, director of the Justicia Naval de la Unidad Juridica told senators Friday, "We were asked to clean house, and now we are told we only dusted.  It is clear in some instances there have been human rights violations, but it is inevitable because of the fighting."

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Durango governor sacks Durango's top cop

Jesus Rosso Holguin

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Less than 24 hours after five Gomez Palacio, Durango transit police agents were gunned down in the La Laguna region, Durango's Secretaria de Seguridad Publica Estatal (SSPE) has stepped down, according to Mexican news accounts.

Jesus Antonio Rosso Holguin was "relieved" as a news report in El Siglo de Durango  news daily reported the news Saturday morning.  According to the translation, the news was released by Durango's Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE)or attorney general office. Rosso Holguin's  replacement was named Roberto Flores Mier, who was sworn in Friday.

Roberto Flores Mier, who is a veterinarian by trade has served with the Durango FGE and SSPE for 19 years.

The departure of Rosso Holguin was reportedly part of a minor shakeup pf the cabinet of Durango governor Jorge Herrera Caldera.  A second folio was changed as well:  Juan Francisco Gutierrez Fragoso of Durango's Secretaria de Desarrollo Economico was replaced by Ricardo Ociel Navarrete Gomez, who had held a private foundation job in the state.

State cabinet shakeups are not unusual in Mexican local politics.  Indeed, as Governor Herrera Caldera enters the third year of his six year term, so some changes are expected.  Changes in Mexican state top security postings are rare, however.

For example, Durango's current FGE, Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso took the attorney general's spot before the second year of her predecessor, Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre, was complete.  Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre was murdered almost a year ago a few hours after FGE  Garza Fragoso pulled Ortiz's security detail.  Ortiz presided over the nearly year long discovery of mass graves in Durango state which eventually totalled 331 dead.

Another example would be the resignation of Brigadier General Ubaldo Ayala Tinoco, the SSPE of Tamaulipas, who left his post two years ago just as the mass graves in San Fernando were coming to light.  Those graves totalled 193 dead.

Rosso Holguin leaves in his wake a weakened but only recently revived security program in La Laguna and the oncoming pressure imposed by the newly elected federal government of the requirement that all police working in Mexico will be certified or will lose their jobs by November, 2013.  Many state and local police corporations have already begun the tests and transition to the new requirement, including Durango state.

The far eastern Durango municipality of Gomez Palacio lost almost 160 police agents earlier this month because of an internal investigation, and because those police agents refused to take part in training offered to them, according to Mexican press accounts.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

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