Justice in Ciudad Juarez Still Illusive
According to a report from Mexidata:
“Legal charges in the murder cases of several women and young girls in Ciudad Juarez began falling apart in recent days. Even as Mexican authorities stepped up a campaign to convince international public opinion that the justice tide was turning in favor of female victims of gender violence, multiple defendants walked free or were not charged with crimes.“
As they report, 2 cases in particular illustrate just how hard it is to get justice in these murders:
“Two other recent cases also cast doubt on women’s prospects for justice in Ciudad Juarez. In late September, state Judge Neza Zuñiga decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Rafael Pineda Delgado with murder. Pineda claimed that last month’s shooting death of his 20-year-old wife, Karla Ivonne Quiroz Bernal, was accidental.
“It happened when I was playing a joke on her,” Pineda said. “I pointed the pistol at her, from which I had removed the bullets for cleaning, but a projectile got stuck in the magazine and caused her death.” Quiroz left behind two young children.
Eyebrows were also raised in the city – even within the ranks of the PGJE – when a commander for the State Investigations Agency (AEI), the police department long responsible for investigating women’s homicides, was ordered to undergo therapy instead of criminal prosecution for allegedly trying to strangle his girlfriend before attempting suicide. Jesus Eduardo Aleman Medina previously served in different posts in Palomas, Villa Ahumada and the Juarez Valley, but now reportedly is assigned to the AEI’s special anti-kidnapping squad.“
Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities
The cases may be falling apart, but that’s not stopping the state authorities from pursuing in earnest another “scapegoating” case involving three men from Juarez, one who is in U.S. custody on immigration-related charges. - Diana Washington Valdez, author of The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women/Cosecha de Mujeres: Safari en el desierto mexicano.