An infamy 2023/11/09 | Excelsior

As there is no legal provision that indicates that it is a crime to maintain a hypothesis about a criminal act that is not to the liking of the President, Murillo is accused of crimes against the administration of justice, torture and forced disappearance without there being a single piece of evidence of who committed any of those crimes. He and his team solved the Iguala case in four months after a thorough investigation, and managed to have numerous alleged perpetrators arrested and put on trial.

There is no legal reason to keep the former attorney in prison, who has been in jail for almost 15 months. Judge José Rivas González has granted him, in one of the proceedings against him, preventive house arrest in strict application of the first paragraph of article 166 of the National Code of Criminal Procedures, which provides:

“In the event that the accused is a person over seventy years of age or affected by a serious or terminal illness, the court may order that preventive detention be carried out at the home of the accused person or, if applicable, , in a medical or geriatric center, under the appropriate precautionary measures.”

The third paragraph of that article orders that “those who, at the discretion of the supervisory judge, can escape the action of justice or display conduct that makes their social risk presumed” will not enjoy this prerogative.

It is enough to meet one of the requirements of the first paragraph of the aforementioned section for house arrest to be granted, and Murillo meets two of those requirements: he is 75 years old and is affected by not one, but several serious illnesses: chronic pulmonary obstruction that It causes intense pain when breathing and requires oxygen by artificial means, systemic arterial hypertension and cerebral vascular insufficiency.

The seriousness of these illnesses, which have required hospitalization of the accused several times, cannot be objected to. And even if he did not have any illness, he meets the age requirement: he exceeds the seventy years required by law.

And, of course, there is no risk that he will escape justice, since his illnesses would make it impossible for him to lead the life of a fugitive: he needs constant medical attention and not infrequent hospitalizations. Nor has he carried out a single action that could be understood as conduct that makes it presumed that he represents a social risk.

However, the Attorney General's Office, echoing the President's loud protest, announced that it will challenge the judge's resolution and will accuse him before the Federal Judiciary Council. This is what we have been seeing throughout the entire administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: pressure against judges, attempts at intimidation with the aim of ensuring that they do not resolve any case against what could bother the president.

The case shows us, once again, the importance of having an independent Judiciary in a democratic State of law, and what would happen if judges, magistrates and ministers lost their independence: there would be no obstacle against abuses of power, against the designs, however capricious and arbitrary, of the powerful.

Jesús Murillo Karam should never have been arrested. Preventive house arrest does not mean that he is being absolved. Keeping him in prison is disgraceful: he is being murdered.