Just hours after the blow to her client, Verónica Razo’s legal team is regrouping and considering next steps. This Monday, a judge ruled to keep the woman, who has been in preventive detention for nearly 11 years, in prison despite the legal maximum in Mexico being two. Razo, 43, was physically and sexually tortured by the defunct federal police while in detention. The woman denounces that the agents fabricated the crime they accuse her of, a kidnapping case. The United Nations and Amnesty International have called for his release.
Lawyer Moisés Terán is leading efforts to get Razo out of prison. Terán, a member of the Federal Institute for Public Defense’s Strategic Human Rights Litigation Division, regrets the way Monday’s hearing went. “The judge did what he wanted. He didn’t follow the guidelines given to him by a higher court, he held a confusing, tired hearing, five hours of debate that he’s supposed to solve in five minutes,” he said.
Moisés Terán, Verónica Razo right-back Courtesy
In those five minutes, the judge considered it risky to commute preventive detention to another preventive measure given the woman’s roots in Mexico City remain unclear and the likelihood of escape is high. “According to him, the proofs of address we offer to prove origin were not entirely new. We provided them at the time of the motion to change the precautionary measure, in July last year,” says the attorney.
The issue of the vouchers makes it clear how the authorities proceeded in the case. Terán recalls the first months of 2020 when they took charge of Razo’s defence. “The matter was held for three years. Why? Because there was an examination, a confirmation of an appraisal for the furniture valuation, which could not be carried out because the person who had submitted the appraisal at the time no longer worked there, at the public prosecutor’s office,” he says.
The lawyer jokingly adds: “This appraisal is a document in which an expert says how much the furniture that was said to be in the hideout of the kidnapping gang to which Verónica allegedly belonged is worth. And he makes it clear: “Ratification is a legal act that the expert had to go to court and say that he had prepared it. It’s something that has nothing to do with the event itself!”
Technical details aside, resolving the Razo case is important because of the systematic abuses the preventive detention justice system has been subjected to. Mexican prisons are full of people without a conviction, around 100,000, according to the government. Terán explains that in his client’s case, “the judge said that in this type of crime – kidnapping – the precautionary measure cannot be changed. However,” he adds, “the Nation’s Supreme Court (SCJN) has said in recent months that preventive detention can be modified regardless of the offense in question.”
The woman’s conditions of detention correspond exactly to the criteria of the Supreme Court. On June 8, 2011, federal police arrested Razo in Mexico City. They tortured her in a squad car and sexually abused her, abuse that was repeated at the company’s facilities. At the same time, the agents arrested his brother Erick, who was also tortured. As a result of the beating, Verónica Razo was hospitalized for three days. Then they sent her to prison, where her brother was already. Both have been imprisoned for more than ten years. In May, Terán’s companions obtained the brother’s release, who was acquitted of all charges.
“They were allegedly part of a kidnapping gang. They were charged along with ten other people,” explains the lawyer. “Veronica was accused of allegedly trying to identify the victim and then another group of people went and picked her up. But the main problem is that they didn’t belong to any gang. The alleged operation that dismantled the gang never took place. We made that more than clear in the process,” he defends himself. Terán explains that the brothers were arrested on June 8, a day before the federal police allegedly deployed to break up the alleged kidnapping gang.
“This alleged operation never took place,” insists the lawyer. “They allegedly armed him with an anonymous phone call saying that there were people with guns at a gas station on a street here in Mexico City with a kidnapped person. Authorities are rushing through the operation and arresting everyone,” he adds. “But note they didn’t even release anyone, what happened to the kidnapped person? Apparently they just use their guns. But they didn’t even start a case for the guns, noting that the gas station workers also said nothing ever happened.
In May, the same judge who released Erick Razo convicted his sister of one of his kidnapping counts. “All other crimes of kidnapping and organized crime fell,” explains Terán. “The charge that’s keeping them in jail is one where a person says Verónica arrived at their store a day early, asked her name, got scared, and the next day they kidnapped him.” On Addressing this statement, the lawyer says: “I do not know if they put any pressure on this person … But let’s think about the context of the country at the time, the simulated arrests that took place days before and which were later presented to the media, simulated operations…”.
The plan now is to appeal the verdict and wait until a higher court compels the judge to repeat the hearing, taking into account Razo’s situation. It’s a familiar situation. The same judge had already avoided getting the woman out of jail and a higher court had already ordered him to review his decision, which happened on Monday. Terán is confident that the next round will be different and that Razo will be released from prison soon.
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