This is the fourth in a series of articles examining the claims of Kerry Kennedy of human rights abuses by the Mexican Military. You can read the last three reports here, here and hereBy Chris Covert
Upon returning from her trip to Mexico, human rights activist and daughter of the late Robert F Kennedy wrote a letter presumably to her daughters, which served as a travelogue for her trip to Guerrero earlier last month. Kennedy appeared to have expended as much energy and probably money as she could in giving advance notice of her visit to an area she has repeatedly attempted to compare, absurdly to Alabama of the early 1960s.
In her letter she makes reference to two rapes which took place in southern Guerrero, each within a month of the other, and both as different in circumstances as can be detailed. The rape of Valentina Rosendo Cantu in February 2002 in Acatepec municipality has been demonstrated by the facts available by humans right organizations as being as insoluble a crime as can be in Mexico. The circumstances, the available evidence and the errors made by local government agencies in the area have rendered the case as much as a crime that may well never be solved.
The other rape, of Ines Fernandez Ortega, can be taken as a case in which better efforts were made to determine the perpetrators, however, like the Rosendo Cantu case, errors were made by civilian authorities which left the case impossible to prosecute.
| It cannot be stressed enough that human rights groups such as Amnesty International to which Kerry Kennedy maintains strong ties have routinely played up the intimidation of indigenous Indians in southern Guerrero, while ignoring altogether that many of those communities had in the recent past materially supported communist insurgencies against the Mexican military, which have cost the lives of Mexican boys in the service of their country. |
Two days later through a lawyer and interpreter, a case was filed with the Allende Judicial District. The same day, Fernandez Ortega went to the General Hospital in Ayutla for medical care in the aftermath of the rape. The victim refused to be examined by a male physician and waited a day later to be examined by a female physician, at which point it can be presumed tissue and sperm samples were taken. Unlike the Rosendo Cantu case, no report on the examination was made available in her human rights case, although it could be she suffered no apparent injuries in the rape. However a psychological examination was performed, but the content of the report was not released.
A critical event took place in evidence collection on July 9th and on August 16th. By this time the Military prosecution Service for the Mexican 35th Military Zone was already investigating the rape.
On July 9th, a chemical forensic expert with the Guerrero state attorney general's office said that the collected swabs contained evidence of semen.
On August 16th, an unidentified agent with presumably with the 35th Military Zone was informed by the Guerrero state attorney general's office that the biological sample taken from Fernandez Ortega were not in the archive; that they had been exhausted.
On August 25th, the Guerrero state attorney general's office declined jurisdiction in favor of the 35th Military Zone, which was at the time a standard legal procedure. The grounds for the transfer of jurisdiction was that military personnel may have been involved in the crime.
As with the Rosendo Cantu case, Fernandez Ortega attempted on several occasions to make the military transfer jurisdiction to civilian court and was rebuffed, once by the Military prosecutor's office in an informal correspondence and then twice in two different court levels, district and state. Fernandez Ortega attempted to request a change of jurisdiction and again was rejected when her case was reopened in January 2007 in the Allende Judicial District, where the case was originally filed four years prior.
Between May, 2003 and September 2007,the Military Prosecutors Service investigated the rape allegations before closing its investigation. The reasons cited for the closure were:
- the testimony of hearsay witnesses
- failure of the victim to provide additional information
- the contradictions in the statements of Fernandez Ortgea and her minor daughter
- and the medical tests carried out.
None of the information provided by the victim, except for her initial charge, witnesses and Guerrero state officials pointed to the participation of Mexican military in the allegation.
Indeed the Military Prosecutors Service said that at the time of the rape, no Mexican Army units or personnel were reported AWOL or out of their assigned areas of operation. Unlike the Rosendo Cant case it is unclear how many personnel were interviewed or gave statements, but we can infer that at least one rifle company with the base closest to Fernandez Ortega was focused on for the investigation.
One additional factor did not weigh in Fernandez Ortega's favor and that was her amended statement. The victim returned to the Allende prosecutor's office more than a month after filing her original complaint and amended her original statement to include information of her recollection of an additional detail of the assault.
| It is indeed sad that through apparent incompetence and a blatant disregard for forensic procedures that a rapist was not brought to justice, but what is sadder and indeed more pathetic that an American individual of some substance, who should know better would continue to lead a crusade without any evidentiary basis, and without any real hope of justice. |
In a passage in the human rights court report was a curious episode, unreferenced by a date and time, in which a rifle platoon went to Fernandez Ortega's home with a typewriter seeking a statement from her in front of the soldiers. Fernandez said she was intimidated by the presence of the soldiers and refused to come out of her home to give testimony
In her amended statement, Fernandez Ortega recalled the shoulder patch allegedly worn by the military personnel who assaulted her as being the Mexican 41st Infantry Battalion, a subordinate unit to the Mexican 35th Military Zone.
At least one other unsubstantiated, albeit informal accusation, was made against the 41st Infantry Battalion around the time of the rape. The allegation involved a rifle detachment surrounding a number of youths playing soccer, forcing them at gunpoint to lay prone and then intimidating them with their weapons for a brief period of time before releasing them. This specific report was posted by a local human rights group, so every reason exists to discount its veracity.
The report ( I do not have the link ) mentioned the specific unit of the 41st Infantry Battalion was well known for abuses against indigenous individuals in the area. Local human rights groups are known for their ties to leftist guerrilla groups and their supporters, and for their less than unbiased reporting of incidents.
Commander of the Mexican 9th Military Zone based in Acapulco, Guerrero, General Mario Lopez Gutierrez, said at the time the Mexican military is always the subject of false accusations in the area.
One more dissimilar element between the two rape cases is that the Ortega Fernandez case, despite the lack of evidence and the lack of even a suspect, was never dismissed and was indeed taken all the way to Washington, DC at the Inter American Court of Human Rights.
It is indeed sad that through apparent incompetence and a blatant disregard for forensic procedures that a rapist was not brought to justice, but what is sadder and indeed more pathetic that an American individual of some substance, who should know better would continue to lead a crusade without any evidentiary basis, and without any real hope of justice.