Mexican president Felipe Calderon and the most important mafia bosses of the country have been accused of human rights violations at the ICC in The Hague.

By Luisa Fernanda Lopez

The file presented to prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo contains 470 documented cases of crimes, ranging from murder, forced disappearance, violations, recruitment of minors, torture and forced displacement. These facts happened in a context of general and systematic violence, which has plunged Mexico in a humanitarian crisis with more than 50.000 assassinations, 230.000 displaced persons and 10.000 disappearances.

The accusation presented in The Hague is supported by 23.000 signatures. The documentation presented by various human rights organizations explains the defects of the Mexican Judicial system to judge crimes against humanity. According to the accusers, this will be one of the most important arguments for the ICC to consider itself competent to intervene in Mexico. The country has signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the ICC.

State responsibility
In the complaint presented to the ICC, the Mexican State is directly held responsible of perpetrating crimes against humanity. Some of the crimes: violations perpetrated by the Mexican Army, slavery of immigrants by officials of the federal government; assassinations of civilians in military compounds and torture in order to achieve confessions.

The accusers point out President Felipe Calderon as the highest responsible person for these crimes; according to the Constitution, he is the highest authority of the Armed Forces and he is the Head of State. According to the lawyer who formulated the accusation, Netzaí Sandoval, Calderon is responsible for omission of functions and for covering up these crimes.
“The president should have taken measures to prevent these acts, for instance by imposing codes of conduct on police officers and soldiers. Moreover, he should have forced the implementation of the Istanbul Protocol, which regulates efficient investigations in case of torture, and he should have prohibited the Army to transfer prisoners to military compounds.”

One of the most severe accusations in the document is that high officers of the National Institute for Migration have participated in the abduction and sale of immigrants to the drugs syndicates.
“Proof is presented to the prosecutor of the participation of officers of the National Institute for Migration in these crimes. The National Commission for Human Rights identified officials who were selling immigrants as slaves to the drugs syndicate Los Zetas”, explains Sandoval.

Mafia brutality
The files state that the leaders of the drug syndicates are equally responsible of these crimes. During the last years they have accumulated power over a vast territory and they dispose of real armies. In their violent and generalized actions against Mexican society, they are accused of attacks on hospitals and rehabilitation centres, of having executed numerous amputations and even decapitations (410 in 2010) and attacks against civilians.

Netzaí Sandoval explains one of the most critical situations: the recruitment of children under 15 by criminal gangs. According to the human rights networks approximately 30.000 children have been recruited in the last years. “In the Statute of Rome this is considered a war crime and a crime against humanity, but the Mexican Law still does not consider it as such (…) precisely because of the fact that the Mexican state does not have the means to judge this situation, we ask the ICC to intervene.”

México, without legal instruments
To prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, lawyer Netzaí Sandoval will argue that the Mexican judicial system is neither capable nor willing to judge crimes against humanity. One of the big obstacles to enforce justice at a national level is that many of the above mentioned crimes are not even qualified as crimes in the penal code of Mexico, for instance forced disappearance. “In 24 of the 32 judicial entities which compose the Mexican Republic, the crime of forced disappearance does not exist”, explains Sandoval.

Colombia, Honduras and eventually México
After the presentation of the files, the accusers hope prosecutor Moreno Ocampo will apply a system of “judicial correspondence”, and decide to perform a preliminary investigation, as he did in the case of Honduras and Colombia.
If he does, “at least he would apply the principle of complementation, a principle promoted by this prosecutor and which gives the opportunity to the national authorities to prove that they really want to enforce the law”, says Sandoval.
But, according to the people who have decided to go to The Hague, this is not likely to occur in Mexico for now.