Source: Proceso (Spanish)
Author: Jorge Carrasco Araizaga
August 18, 2014
Translation: JB for CART / ACDV
Wallace case goes international: Canadian activist denounces threats
MEXICO CITY – The president of the Canadian Association for Rights and Truth, David Bertet, will file a complaint with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for the criminal investigation began against him in Mexico after the magazine Proceso and the digital newspaper Los Ángeles Press published the existence of duplicate official documents on Hugo Alberto Wallace, who had been declared officially dead.
“I will go to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to lodge a complaint from Canada against the person or persons who, in Mexico, are responsible for the threats of which I am victim,” the activist wrote in a report that he made public after presenting it before the FEADLE (Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against the Freedom of Expression) of the PGR (Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office).
The complaint is for “the wrongful acts of intimidation, retaliation and abuse of office” by the Anti-kidnapping Unit of the same PGR, in relation with the previous inquiry AP/SEIDO/UEIDMS/464/2014.
This inquiry, began by the agent of the federal Public Ministry Lourdes López Lucho Iturbide, considers the Canadian activist as one of the suspects for the publication of two birth certificates and two CURPs (Unique Code of Population Registry) belonging to Hugo Alberto Wallace.
Also being investigated is Enriqueta Cruz, mother of Brenda Quevedo, one of the defendants in the so-called Wallace, as well as the journalists Guadalupe Lizárraga, of Los Ángeles Press, and Anabel Hernández, who published those documents (Proceso, No. 1961).
“The preliminary inquiry is directed against me, even though I have committed no crime since the documents published by those media outlets is public information that anyone can obtain,” indicates the Canadian activist in his report directed to the Public Prosecutor Laura Angelina Borbolla.
He adds: “I want to report as a reprisal and an attempt at intimidation against me the recent actions taken by the Anti-kidnapping Unit of the PGR; reprisal and intimidation that are the consequence of my investigative work done in a legal and professional way over the alleged kidnapping and death of Hugo Alberto Torres Miranda or Hugo Alberto Wallace Miranda.”
As a result of that work, he says, “the association that I head showed that the accusations against the victims of Isabel Miranda de Wallace Torres were manufactured with the invaluable help of major government officials.”
The actions by the staff of the Anti-kidnapping Unit of the PGR “does not surprise us” and “it confirms our suspicions as to the existence of a wide network of corruption and influence peddling within the institution headed by Jesús Murillo Karam,” points out Bertet, who also promoted the liberation of the French citizen Florence Cassez.
“As a foreign activist and a human rights defender concerned about the situation existing in Mexico, it is really disappointing to see that, even though the Mexican government receives subsidies from a country as Canada to improve its own fight capacities against crime as well as the justice system in conformity with international standards, an institution such as the PGR continues to be an accomplice of organized crime, gnawed by corruption, moved by interests foreign to justice,” he emphasizes.
