9
to do so.” In this regard, they argued that FEVIMTRA personnel were denied access to
the 35th Infantry Battalion of Casas Grandes and that from their case file “no action
showing an investigation of members of the military [was] apparent,” “nor formalities
or concrete efforts [at conducting] a search.” They stressed that the State “continues
to treat the case as one of missing persons when there are sufficient elements to
investigate a forced disappearance at the hands of the army.” They accordingly noted
that classifying this investigation as a missing persons case - which is not itself a crime
- “is to diminish the seriousness of the crime committed and to delimit the possibility of
achieving results [...].” They observed that there has been an “unjustified delay” on
the part of the State in establishing the geographical position of the telephone from
which the beneficiary Nitza Paola placed a call on February 3, 2010. They likewise
considered it inexplicable that “seven months since Nitza made that call for help, which
would be crucial to saving her life, none of the investigations have proven capable of
determining its provenance [nor] has a single operation taken place in that location to
find Nitza.” The representatives expressed their view that “[t]his very serious omission
evinces at the very least a lack of interest and willingness on the part of the State of
Mexico to safeguard the [physical, mental, or moral] integrity of the victims of forced
disappearances.” Concerning the letters sent to the various federal entities, the
representatives observed that these efforts lacked clarity regarding the information
requested, the databases or archives where the searches were to take place, and the
manner in which they were to be carried out. Thus, they viewed this exchange as
“rather resembling formalities that are being undertaken in a mechanical fashion[,]”
unbecoming the sort of effective and immediate response that a situation of forced
disappearance requires.
13.
The representatives also indicated that the actions of the PGR have been
“lacking in coordination, confused, and contradictory” because on the one hand it
reported that one of its agencies could not file a criminal affidavit in the preliminary
investigation due to the lack of sufficient elements tending to show the participation of
military officials; yet, at the same time, it declared that another agency had delegated
jurisdiction to the military court system regarding the first preliminary investigation
that had been previously commenced (supra Considering 7). They regarded this as a
confusion because in order for one agency to delegate jurisdiction to the military justice
system “there had to exist elements necessary to corroborate that it was members of
the military who committed the crime.” They further noted that this result was also
contradictory because “the PGR ha[d] [already begun under the auspices of]
FEVIMTRA, one of its units, a preliminary investigation for forced disappearance in the
[present] case.” Regarding Mexico’s proposal to include the beneficiaries in the
Support Program for Families of Missing and Abducted Persons with the aim of
spreading personal information and photographs of the beneficiaries under the caption
“Help them return home,” the representatives considered that with such a move the
PGR was in fact proposing to carry out social services and not the prosecution of a
crime in locating the beneficiaries. This was as if discovering the beneficiaries’ location
depended on society’s efforts “and not [on] investigations or actions on the part of the
search authorities in military quarters or in the place from [whence] Nitza made the
phone call.” The representatives also noted that despite the State’s information “at
present, none of the family members ha[d] received [from the Public Prosecutor’s
Office] the aforementioned [legal or counseling] assistance” (supra Considering 8).
They stressed that “in the case files, there is no record of any investigation related to
members of the armed forces despite their being the only ones accused of the forced
disappearance of the Alvarados.” In general, the representatives were of the view that
the State’s efforts in the course of the open investigations, in particular those carried
out by FEVIMTRA, appear to be merely procedural, thereby permitting one to note the