They are going to take him out and kill me: María Elena Ríos

The turn taken this week from the Oaxaca courts in the case of saxophonist María Elena Ríos, attacked with acid and burned in 90% of her body on September 9, 2019, by leaving her alleged assailant under house arrest, shows a scenario as clear as desolate.

We all know how Mexico is in terms of justice and especially the state of Oaxaca, and we know perfectly well that in a case as relevant and mediatic as that of Maria Elena Rios, NO judge is left alone.

Therefore, the person really responsible for the fact that Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal has the real possibility of moving from jail to his family's house today is the President of the Superior Court of Justice of the State of Oaxaca, Eduardo Pinacho Sanchez.

There is no way he did not know the magnitude of the saxophonist's case, because he was elected President of the Superior Court of Justice on January 4, 2020, three months before Juan Vera Carrizal was arrested and indicted (April 2020).

Pinacho Sánchez knew about the level of the attack, the physical and emotional suffering of the victim, the media pressure and, of course, the identity of the alleged mastermind and the political power that would presumably protect him.

Governor Alejandro Murat did for Malena's case only what was strictly necessary in his competence as the state's highest authority, but not much more. He was not particularly empathetic or deferential to the victim. He did support her, he did allocate budget for her medical care, but that is precisely an obligation of the state. It was not a favor.

It has been exactly 3 years and 5 months since the attack on María Elena Ríos in which, despite the painful -physically and emotionally- of her medical procedures, she has not given up her fight for justice, having lost the life she had and being forced to build a very different one.

Revictimized again and again in the legal process, the most recent chapter tells a tortuous story, in the hearing generated for the eleventh amparo requested by the defense of the alleged aggressor, where the judge Teodulo Pacheco Pacheco has been denounced by the saxophonist and her defense, of acting more as a defender of the accused, than as an imparter of justice.

I was there for two days, from sunrise to sunset, behind the door of the room where María Elena Ríos locked herself in to follow the virtual hearing in which, at each recess, her hopes for justice were being diluted, as her defense was in dialogue with the public prosecutor, who was astonished to see a judge clearly leaning towards the side of the accused.

They mentioned how since October of last year, partial and fabricated evidence has been fabricated to let the accused of attempted femicide off. Evidence that was made known to the victim only until the day of the hearing.

There is talk of a judge who limited himself to repeating as a mantra that "the defense's (the defendant's) theory of the case must be heeded," without adhering to the legality and legality of the Mexican penal system.

A judge who only gave a little more than an hour to the defense of María Elena Ríos to hear the evidence described in a 100-page document.

It was a five-day hearing, in days of up to 20 hours in which the defense of the alleged aggressor was allowed to "incorporate evidence in a manner that violated the victim's rights".

During the recesses, I was able to gather testimony from María Elena 's family and her defense, who told me about the moment in which Judge Teodulo Pacheco threatened to continue the hearing without her and to leave her without her legal advisor, whom, by the way, he silenced over and over again during the sessions, in flagrant contempt of an injunction.

Each and every one of the proofs that I mention here were fought by the State Prosecutor's Office, in the voice of an aggressive Public Prosecutor, who repeatedly pointed out to the judge the contempt of the law in which he was incurring.

This has unquestionably been one of the most relevant cases that the Oaxaca court has faced and probably the only one that has occupied the sustained attention of the national and international media, so it is very difficult to believe that the presiding magistrate, Eduardo Pinacho, was not attentive to what was happening there.

Today, Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal, alleged mastermind of the attempted femicide against María Elena Ríos, enjoys a privilege that puts her and her family's safety at a new risk, and places the state of Oaxaca in the darkest terrain of impunity, when it does not even have an appointed prosecutor.

If Governor Salomón Jara is as indignant as he expressed in social networks and as committed as he says he is, by the time you are reading these lines, he should have already had a long conversation with the President of the Tribunal, Eduardo Pinacho Sánchez, on the occasion of the challenge that his public prosecutor's office is to present.

A change was promised for Oaxaca and it was offered to separate the political power from the administration of justice, so the outcome of the María Elena Ríos case will reflect the reality of that change and its scope...

Monica Garza

The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.

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