State AG: Predecessor Destroyed Evidence of Political Assassination

(Chilpancingo, ElSur 20 August) State Attorney General Alberto López Rosas made public that the manipulation and suppression of evidence that took place in the investigation of the murder of Armando Chavarría Barrera was ordered by “higher-ups” in the administration of then-governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo. In a press conference on August 18 the attorney general discussed the homicide of the President of the State Legislature, which as of today is two years old, and without any sign of resolution.

The investigative file disappeared from the attorney general’s office at some point between 2009 and May of 2010. The matter was transferred bureaucratically between the state and federal governments for another year. The present attorney general said he had to start the investigation over again from scratch, and that important evidence had been destroyed by insiders per instructions from the highest levels of the state government. The Zeferino Torreblanca administration had sought to implicate “guerrillas” as the culprits; however, no motives were ever clarified. According to the AG, “In the two and one-half months since we have been able to recommence the effort that was shelved and stalled by the previous administration, we are working on certain lines of investigation designed to discover the most logical motives and to avoid the manipulation and alteration of evidence. We have discarded lines of thinking that were in the case to cause distraction or to manipulate inappropriately the course of the inquiry.”

Attorney General Rosas said that the previous administration did not show “99% of progress” as it had announced, but rather “99% confusion.” This was a reference to Governor Torreblanca’s (now fully discredited) statement that the case had been resolved and that the only thing missing was the arrest warrants against the guerrillas. The current focus of the Attorney General’s investigation is to identify who gave the orders to suppress evidence and shelf the investigation, and why. Given the loss and destruction of evidence under the previous administration, this path is more likely to lead to the perpetrators than a more direct route, General Rosas said.