By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Durango state Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso told the press Monday that the number of lawyers missing in Durango was only 10, not 100 to 120, according to news reports.
A news report which appeared in Milenio news daily said that de la Garza Fragoso admitted to the press that while 120 incidents or reports have been received concerning missing lawyers, some of them are minor incidents such as accident investigations, and that the number of actual cases of missing lawyers is 10.
Fiscalia de la Garza Fragoso's denied a report by Durango state Barra de Abogados or bar association president Martha Alicia Gurrola of the number of missing lawyers was as many as 120.
According to a separate news account in Milenio, Señora Alicia Gurrola said that them number of dead or missing was rumored to be as many as 120, but also said that the numbers she had were unclear.
Many of the 10 missing are those who went missing over the previous four years, well before de la Garza Fragoso's term which began in mid 2011. Her term began as the mass graves in Durango, most of them in Durango city began to be uncovered. The final toll of the exhumations was 330. Many of those dead were in other places in Durango state as well as far away at the Durango side of La Laguna, and some of the dead were reported missing as far back as 2007, when Felipe Calderon began his war on the drug cartels..
The news report said that most of the 10 missing lawyers could be amongst the 330 found in Durango in 2011-2012.
Señora Alicia Gurrola lamented in a third Milenio article which was published last Saturday that de la Garza Fragoso had not met with the Barra de Abogados in six months to provide help in security.
The most famous case of a lawyer disappearing in Durango took place in late 2011, when de la Garza Fragoso's predecessor, Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre was kidnapped and murdered in Durango city in March of 2012. At a presentation with the Durango state Chamber of Deputies at the time, de la Garza Fragoso admitted pulling state paid Ortiz Aguirre's security detail only hours before the murder.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com
