by Frontera NorteSur
If Alvarez's legal victory is upheld, it would mark the third time Chihuahua state and federal cases against suspected cotton field killers have wound up in tatters. Previous investigations unraveled amid revelations of tortured suspects, extracted confessions, wild stories, mismatched bodies and other irregularities.
Posted on February 8, 2008
In a sharp blow to the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE), state Judge Catalina Ochoa Contreras declared innocent on Feb. 6 a suspect charged with killing one of the eight women found murdered in a Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001. The defense of Edgar Alvarez Cruz had long contended that the charges against the young man were based on lies, pressured statements and questionable or non-existent evidence.
Alvarez's defense also presented proof that their client was in the United States at the time of many of the disappearances and slayings of the victims found in the cotton field. Another inconsistency was the single murder charge against Alvarez, who was formally accused of killing 17-year-old Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis, but not tried for the murders of the other victims who were discovered on the same site and at the same time as Reyes.
The PGJE appealed Judge Ochoa's verdict, but made no immediate public comment on the ruling.
"The exoneration of the innocent man adds to the list of scapegoats detained by the state prosecutor as serial killers and then freed for lack of proof to incriminate them," editorialized Ciudad Juarez's Lapolaka news site. Upon hearing news of the sentence, Alvarez thanked the court for absolving him of the Reyes slaying but added, "it should've been done within the first 72 hours."
Alvarez still faces charges in the 1998 killing of teenager Silvia Garbiela Laguna Cruz, a murder he also vehemently denies committing.
If Alvarez's legal victory is upheld, it would mark the third time Chihuahua state and federal cases against suspected cotton field killers have wound up in tatters. Previous investigations unraveled amid revelations of tortured suspects, extracted confessions, wild stories, mismatched bodies and other irregularities.
Although questions swirled around Alvarez's August 2006 detention from the very beginning, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and representatives her office repeatedly told the press that additional evidence against Alvarez and two other accused men would be forthcoming. In the end, however, none materialized.
What distinguished the Alvarez affair against the prior cotton field cases was the key role played by the United States. Alvarez was living as an undocumented worker in Denver, Colo., when he was arrested based on a confession made by Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz to the Texas Rangers.
Held on an unrelated charge, Granados tied Alvarez to the cotton field killings. Later revelations seriously questioned Granados' credibility as a witness, painting instead a picture of a disturbed, drug-abusing individual who was prone to delusions.
Despite the flimsiness of the Alvarez case, as well as the previous use of torture in the cotton field investigations, the US government quickly deported Alvarez to Mexico to face trial. He has sat in jail ever since.
At the time of Alvarez's arrest, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza hailed a major breakthrough in solving the Ciudad Juarez femicides.
While the U.S.-Mexico investigation of the cotton field killings verges on collapse, three of the victims' mothers are taking their quest for justice to an international legal body. Last December, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights notified lawyers for the women that it has accepted their case for review.
The cases were originally pursued in the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by the mothers of victims Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Laura Berenice Ramos Monarrez and Claudia Ivete Gonzalez. Transfer of the case to the Inter-American Court means that the Mexican government did not follow the IACHR's recommendations it earlier issued to ensure justice for victims' relatives. In a separate report late last month, Mexico's official National Human Rights Commission criticized all three levels of the Mexican government for not following its own justice recommendations related to the Ciudad Juarez women's murders.
Karla Michel Salas Ramirez, an attorney for the three mothers and a member of Mexico's National Association of Democratic Lawyers, said the Costa Rica case could set a legal precedent for other femicide cases. The Mothers' lawyers will argue that Mexico is in violation of the Belen Do Para Convention, an international agreement which obliges states to protect women from gender violence. The plaintiffs also seek sanctions against Chihuahua state government officials who were responsible for handling the cotton field investigation. Unlike the advisory nature of the IACHR'S recommendations, rulings from the Costa Rica court are obligatory for member states.
On another international note, the Ciudad Juarez femicides drew a sharp comment from United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, who was on an official visit to Mexico this week.
"In Mexico, the issue of impunity is the greatest challenge that has to be confronted and overcome," Arbour said. "The case of the femicides, in which the justice system doesn't protect women, is worrisome."
In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, media outlets, business groups, human rights organizations and just plain ordinary citizens are all alarmed at the escalating homicide rates for both men and women since the beginning of the year. Nine women and girls have been killed for different reasons since Jan. 1. Also last month, a woman's skeleton was recovered from an area frequently used as a dumping ground for both male and female murder victims.
Additionally, a 15-year-old high school student, Adriana Enriquez Sarmiento, was reported missing from downtown Ciudad Juarez on Jan. 18. The young girl had attended the private Ignacio Allende Preparatory, the same institution three previous femicide victims, including Laura Berenice Ramos, also had attended,.
In a blog entry this week, El Paso author and longtime femicide researcher Diana Washington Valdez reported that a female Allende Prep student was accosted outside the school Jan. 31 by a man who exposed himself to the girl. According to the journalist, an intervention by prominent Ciudad Juarez labor rights activist Cipriana Jurado, who just happened to be in the vicinity of the school at the time of the attack, prompted the man to run away before police could detain him.
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Sources: -- Lapolaka.com, February 6 and 7, 2008. -- El Diario de Juarez, February 7, 2008. Article by Gabriela Minjares. -- Norte, January 30 and February 7, 2008. Articles by Nohemi Barraza and Antonio Rebolledo. -- La Jornada, January 30, 2008 and February 6, 2008. Articles by Victor Ballinas and Ruben Villalpando. -- Cimacnoticias.com, December 26, 2007 and January 24, 2008. Articles by Sara Lovera Lopez and Lourdes Godinez Leal. -- Proceso/Apro, January 29, 2008. Article by Jose Gil Olmos. -- Dianawashingtonvaldez.blogspot.com/
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
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