International Court Holds Mexico Accountable for Ciudad Juarez Femicides

Summary

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Three members of [Laura Berenice Ramos]' family, including her outspoken mother Benita Monarrez, were granted political asylum in the US in 2009. According to testimony presented in the femicide trial, pressure on Ramos' relatives intensified after the OAS court accepted the case in 2007. Finally, the Mexican government was ordered to compensate victims' families and their legal representatives to the tune of more than $800,000 for damages and expenses.

In 2002, [Mercedes Doretti] said, officials from Chihuahua City substituted the first autopsy report for a new one that listed asphyxiation as the cause of the women's deaths, an explanation which conveniently jibed with the State of Chihuahua's case against the two bus drivers accused at the time of strangling victims to death. That conclusion, Doretti told Frontera Norte, was "absolutely not valid" and without basis. "There was no scientific evidence whatsoever," Doretti said.

Doretti disputed the notion that lost or hidden evidence, combined with tattered paper trails in the cotton field and possibly related cases, would make the road to justice virtually impossible to navigate. The Chihuahua state attorney general's office is fully aware of the irregularities and the chain-of-command responsible for committing them, Doretti asserted. "It's a matter of deciding (to investigate)," Doretti said. "If they want to do it, they can."

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International Court Holds Mexico Accountable for Ciudad Juarez Femicides

FRONTERA NORTESUR

In a ruling that could reverberate across the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has taken the Mexican government to task for the murders of three young women in Ciudad Juarez. In a historic decision published this month, the justices found the government incurred in violations of the American Convention on Human Rights and the 1994 Inter...

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