The case of the wrongly identified "son of el Chapo", who was detained and presented as such to the press last Thursday by authorities only to back down a day later, is a clear example of the dangers of exhibiting prisoners before they are judged, according to human rights advocates and information experts.
"It's paradigmatic because we are faced with the possibility of having displayed two young men, with claims of paternal filiations and criminal involvement, who in all probability have nothing to do with this and it's because of that an example of the risks that can exist" said the first representative of the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District (CDHDF), Mario Patrón.
Last Thursday's morning, the Secretary of Marine detained two young men in the municipality of Zapopan (Jalisco, México); they found them to be carrying guns, money and fake IDs.
Just a few hours later they were presented in Mexico's capital to great media anticipation since, allegedly, they had captured Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, son of the most wanted drug trafficker in the world and who, also allegedly, managed the assets of his father, one of the wealthiest men in the world.
A huge success for President Felipe Calderón's war on crime, especially with the upcoming elections so close (they are to be held on the 1st of July).
But only a day after, rumors started running amongst the press about the detainee not being the son of "El Chapo" but the other prisoner's brother, Kevin Daniel Beltrán Ríos.
First his mother appeared on a press conference stating that "El Chapo's" alleged son wasn't so and that the prisoners were, in fact, her son and his half brother.
After that it was the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) turn. It is in the United States were the real son of "El Chapo" has pending businesses, and through the DEA his identity started to get cleared out; the Mexican Office of Public Prosecution confirmed that it had been a case of mistaken identity.
"They are displayed as 'possibly accountable', but parading them like that is a mechanism that violates their presumption of innocence and generates the conditions for parallel judgments by the media", explained Patrón.
Some months ago the CDHDF presented a petition to the Attorney General's Office (PGR by its initials in Spanish) requesting to stop the presentation of detainees to the press; after the petition was rejected an appeal was lodged to the Supreme Court of Justice and it is pending resolution.
"In this stage of the criminal investigation it is an infringement of human rights to exhibit people" stated Patrón and added that displaying people to the media generates conditions for parallel judgments.
"We have found that they are subjected to a social sentence and the consequences are traumatic: they cannot get a job, their sons and daughters are expelled from school, their businesses go bankrupt, they are not eligible to bank credits " explained the representative.
In its report, the CDHDF documented 21 cases of people displayed to the media and subsequently set free.
The Commission thinks that, even though society has the right to be informed, the policy of information cannot oversee the people's rights. "The information policy cannot be based on detentions, in any case it should have to be based on the sentences", said Patrón, who is convinced it's the authorities' problem, not the media's.
But for Ernesto López Portillo, investigative journalist and member of the Institute of Criminal Procedure Justice, the media are also to blame in this situation.
"Journalists, as media enforcers are in charge of releasing the media guillotine over the heads of thousands of citizens presented every year in México by the authorities, and we do it in a complacent and sympathetic way with the degrading role we have been confined to" he said.
In his opinion, historically the media has been "an appendage of the justice system and the Police".
In a country were 99% of the reported offenses go unpunished, the authorities "are incapable of preventing and sanctioning the crime" and because of that they "use the media and the journalists so that criminal justice is settled in the media space", appointed López Portillo.
Even though the Constitution warrants the citizens to be considered innocent until proven guilty, every day police reports with the picture of alleged thieves, rapists or drug dealers make it to the editorial offices.
And this, according to the experts, is violating the right to the presumption of innocence and rights regarding personality as well as image, dignity, no discrimination, intimacy and honor; all of them a part of the Mexican Constitution.
editorial@sandiegored.com
Translation : Karen B.
