Murders put justice on trial in Mexico

Financial Times FT.com
Murders put justice on trial in Mexico

By Ronald Buchanan in Mexico City

Published: April 19 2007 21:06 | Last updated: April 19 2007 21:06

The visitor from the Mexico City Human Rights Commission smelled something fishy the moment he presented the prosecutors’ office with an official request for the file on the murder of Alejandra Dehesa, office manager for the city’s Newsweek magazine bureau.

“Which one do you want?” he was asked. “The old one or the new one?”

The new file, of which the rights commission and lawyers for Sergio Dorantes, the alleged killer, had not been informed, revealed that Mr Dorantes had been framed by a false witness who was paid the princely sum of 1,000 pesos (just under £50 or $100), the commission reported late last week.

Meanwhile, Mr Dorantes, after more than two years on the run, is being held in a top-security US prison awaiting extradition to a justice system that many analysts say is corrupt, inefficient and deeply mistrusted by all but the rich and powerful.

Mr Dorantes, 60, is a man of humble origin who built a career as Mexico’s most noted news photographer for international publications such as the New York Times, Paris Match and El País, the Spanish daily.

Ms Dehesa, the murder victim, was his estranged wife, with whom he says he remained on good terms.

A warrant for Mr Dorantes’s arrest was issued when, a month after the murder three years ago, a young messenger told police he had recalled having seen a man answering the photographer’s description bursting out of the Newsweek office shortly after the time when forensic studies indicated Ms Dehesa had been killed.

What the new file on the case revealed was that the messenger later recanted, saying his evidence had been scripted by prosecutors who paid him the 1,000 pesos. Yet he had been the only “solid” witness in a case otherwise built on hearsay.

While on the run, Mr Dorantes peppered friends and former colleagues with e-mails protesting his innocence but voicing his fear that no Mexican court would accept his version.

In a message from jail in the US this week, he told the FT that the years on the run had ruined him financially.

Pressure to come up with a rapid “solution”, whatever the cost, has been obvious in at least two recent cases, said Jorge Zepeda, a political commentator with the daily El Universal. In February, a 73-year-old indigenous woman in the Gulf state of Veracruz was reported to have told relatives, shortly before she died, that she had been beaten and gang-raped by soldiers.

Forensic officials at the Veracruz state prosecutor’s office said they had evidence to back her story, but the government-funded National Human Rights Commission instead concluded she had died of “chronic gastritis”. Without waiting for further investigation, President Felipe Calderón proclaimed the army in the clear.

“That was a mistake, and he did the same thing again in the case of Amado Ramírez,” said Mr Zepeda. Mr Ramírez, a correspondent for the Televisa network, was shot dead in Acapulco on Good Friday.

Given Televisa’s political power, “the pressure to find his killers was immense”, said Mr Zepeda. After two suspects were arrested, Mr Calderón praised the police for catching what he called Amado’s killers. The men are yet to go on trial.

“The sad thing is that even if they are the murderers – and I very much doubt it – nobody will believe it,” said Mr Zepeda.

Mexico’s low-paid, overworked police say the risks they face in their everyday duties compromise their ability to work for justice. Dozens have been killed so far this year alone in the nation’s war against drug traffickers.

The lack of credibility in the system is particularly pervasive when it comes to the rich and well connected.

“The overwhelming perception is that powerful business people are in cahoots with the political elite to avoid falling foul of justice,” says Sergio Aguayo, a professor at the Colegio de México graduate school and a prominent campaigner for democracy.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007