Winesses testy that the case was fabricated against Me' phaas imprisoned in Ayutla 

9 th July 2008

A round of testimonies that corroborate the defendants’ innocence begins today.

They provide evidence of malicious and fraudulent acts on the part of the State Department of Justice.

It is expected that the judge will soon announce the date of the next round of hearings.

Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, Mexico on 9th July 2008. Upon making their statements before the Mixed First Instance Court based in Ayutla, three witnesses for the defence, demonstrated that the case against the five indigenous Me’phaa men from El Camalote was fabricated. They are currently being held in Ayutla, accused of the murder of an Army informant on 1st January this year.

According the Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, the defendant’s legal advisor and lawyer from Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre in the Montaña, “The statements corroborate that the accused are innocent and that the State Justice Department (la Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado, PGJE) acted in a malicious and fraudulent manner during the preliminary inquiry.”

He said that in spite of the fact that the three witnesses’ statements are “precise and clear and confirm that the five members of the Indigenous Me’phaa People’s Organisation (la Organización del Pueblo Indígena Me´phaa, OPIM) are not guilty of the crime they are accused of committing, we are going to continue providing evidence to offer a robust defence for the colleagues. 

The three witnesses for the defence today stood before the Mixed First Instance judge based in Ayutla, Alfredo Sánchez Sánchez and for four hours (from 10am to 2pm) they gave evidence. They made it clear that false accusations have been registered against Orlando Manzanares Lorenzo, Natalio Ortega Cruz, Romualdo Santiago Enedina, Raúl Hernández Abundio and Manuel Cruz Victoriano, who is one of the fourteen indigenous men who was forcibly sterilized by the Department of Health and was the local civil authority when Alejandro Feliciano García was murdered.

For example the witnesses testified that when the Common Jurisdiction Public Prosecutor from Ayutla exhumed the body of Alejandro Feliciano on 4th January, he asked if anybody had knew how the murder had happened upon the request of the then local civil authority Manuel Cruz Victoriano. He was prepared to take witness statements at that time, as required by law, but nobody came forward, not even the victim’s family.

They added that following this response, the Public Prosecutor declared that there was nothing else to be done and he arranged for Alejandro’s family and Manuel Cruz Victoriano to go to Ayutla on Monday 7th January to officially identify the body. However only the latter went and the Public Prosecutor informed him that Alejandro’s family had attended the day before to make their statement.

The defence witnesses also said that Alejandro Feliciano’s family were organised and transported to Ayutla by the brothers Romualdo and Isidro Remigio Cantú, who the OPIM identified as Army collaborators, in order to fabricate accusations against the five Me’phaa who are now imprisoned. They added that the preliminary investigation omitted a series of acts on the part of the ex local civil authority, Manuel Cruz, to get the Public Prosecutor to attend and exhume the body.

At a different point the witnesses declared before the judge that four of the five imprisoned Me’phaa are accused of planning the murder, but they were in Barranca de Guadalupe community and not El Camalote where, according to the prosecution, there was a meeting aimed at finalising the alleged plan to kill Alejandro Feliciano.

Rosales Sierra maintained that the statements from the three defence witnesses show that the State Justice Department “prepared the story and fabricated the case” against the five members of OPIM as part of the government policy of criminalising the struggles of indigenous peoples who have organised to demand that their collective rights be guaranteed.

He added that following these statements “the scarce proof collected by the Public Prosecutor has vanished and obviously cannot support the accusations because there are three witnesses who have made a precise and clear statement that the detainees were not in El Camalote and reaffirm that Raúl Hernández Abundio was not one of the murderers either.”

He said it is expected that the following round of testimonies will be next week, however the person in charge of the Me’phaa’s trial has made surprise changes in the schedule for the hearings.

Press contact:
Teresa de la Cruz
Coordinator of the Communications Department in Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre in La Montaña.
Mina 77, Col, Centro, Tlapa, Guerrero
Tel: 017574761200 / 61220
Mobile: 045 7571025132
Email: tere_delacruz@hotmail.com
www.tachinollan.org