Collapse of Dignity (46 page)

The Fifty-first Court of the Federal District, which had inherited its charges from the state of Sonora, refused our request that it terminate criminal action against me. However, we appealed this decision and got a favorable outcome: The court passed a sentence of acquittal, and that judgment is still in effect. On January 6, 2010, the judges of the Ninth Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Federal District determined in a firm resolution that my defense was well founded. In light of this, it terminated the criminal action and ordered the revocation of the arrest warrant. Once again I was acquitted and declared absolutely innocent.

The result in the Thirty-second Court in the Federal District was similar. We requested termination of the criminal action that had begun in Nuevo León and a cancellation of the arrest warrant. An honest judge declared my arguments valid and complied, ending the charges against me. The PGR, of course, appealed the ruling but was denied, and my acquittal was officially confirmed in July of 2010.

Thus, all the arrest warrants that had originated in the states of San Luis Potosí, Sonora, and Nuevo León were invalidated. At long last, the
courts had firmly declared in all three cases that there were no crimes, no damages, and no victims—and that those who presented themselves as victims (Morales and the others) did not fulfill the necessary requirements to be considered as such. It had taken us over three years of tireless effort, but we had finally been exonerated of all banking fraud charges at the state level.

We had also managed to make progress in the matter of the union's sequestered bank accounts, which had been seized right after Pasta de Conchos and again by SIEDO at Gómez Mont's request in December of 2008. (The personal accounts have proved a more difficult matter; they remain frozen to this day.) Immediately after the second sequestration, the union presented an amparo against SIEDO's unlawful action before the Fifth District Amparo Court in Criminal Matters of the Federal District. Due to the painful slowness of the judicial system, the judge did not pass sentence on this appeal until May 13, 2009. We were disheartened to find out that he had dismissed it.

Of course we appealed the sentence, and on August 13, 2009, the judges issued another ruling, this time in our favor. The court granted the amparo we had requested against the sequestration. From that moment on, the PGR, through SIEDO, was under the obligation to obey the ruling and unfreeze the accounts. Sadly, things don't work that way in Mexico, especially when powerful individuals don't want it to.

On August 25, 2009, SIEDO did comply with the ruling regarding the sequestration, but that same day it issued a new sequestration order, allegedly for reasons different from those that had justified the first sequestration. We presented a complaint, and in October 2009, the amparo court requested that SIEDO obey the original ruling. The second sequestration, said the judges, lacked sufficient grounds, just as the first had. As if it were nothing but a game, SIEDO issued yet another sequestration order a few days later. We filed an amparo and several months later got a third ruling in our favor.

The process was repeated a fourth time, but this time SIEDO's head, Marisela Morales Ibañez, unbelievably claimed that the government should retain control of the funds because they were “suspicious“ the
miners might use the money to buy drugs. This flimsy argument, an absolute embarrassment, was covered in the global media but largely obscured from the Mexican public. (Three weeks after the release of the Wikileaks cable calling Attorney General Chávez's suitability into question, Calderón would pull him out of that role and replace him with Morales Ibañez. Thanks to her aggressive efforts against the miners, exemplified by this outrageous accusation, she had won Grupo México's stamp of approval.)

We won a fourth trial against the sequestration, the judges ruling unanimously in our favor. True to the farcical nature of these proceedings, another sequestration order was issued. At this point we had no choice but to present charges against the state and the public officers who were allowing these spurious proceedings. On September 6, 2011, SIEDO finally obeyed the courts and canceled the last of its sequestrations without issuing orders for another one. After nearly three years of intense legal defense, the union had finally regained control of its bank accounts.

With the state charges having been knocked down one by one, the
main legal issue I now faced was the renewed federal charges. In 2009, the PGR had given the banking fraud charges (which stated that the extinguishment of the $55 million Mining Trust had been illegal) new life when it hid the banking commission's report and re-filed the case against me and three other executive committee members. Juan Linares had been jailed under that arrest warrant. But the same year, the PGR—through SIEDO—also decided to try its hand once more at money-laundering charges. Under these, it was declared that every use of the funds resulting from the supposedly illegal extinguishment of the trust were “from an illicit source,” which they claimed constituted money laundering.

SIEDO had previously tried this money-laundering maneuver back in 2006, but the judge overseeing the matter had denied the arrest warrants and stated that “not only were there no indications of an illegal source of the assets, but there is clear proof of their legal origin,” and “in any case . . . we can affirm from the documents that the assets belong to the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Allied Workers of the
Mexican Republic.” But in SIEDO's second attempt to work the money-laundering angle, it hid the 2006 resolution from the court and again asked for arrest warrants for me and the others. Contrary to all logic, the federal Ninth District Court agreed and issued the warrants.

In response, we presented an appeal for amparo before the Tenth District Amparo Court in Criminal Matters of the Federal District. Marco del Toro presented the abundant proof of the unconstitutional nature of the warrant. On February 26, 2010, the judge in charge of the trial agreed with him and declared the arrest warrant unconstitutional. SIEDO, of course, filed an appeal, but it was filed by lawyers hired by Grupo México, not SIEDO's own representatives. There is no decent explanation for why this would be—a private firm's legal team has no place working on behalf of SIEDO or anyone else in the attorney general's office.

On December 14, 2010, the judges of the First Collegiate Circuit Court in Criminal Matters of the Third Circuit dismissed SIEDO's appeal, and a month and a half later, the arrest warrant against me was canceled in accordance with the ruling. Notwithstanding this cancellation, once again the PGR appealed—again with the support of the lawyers from Grupo México. It truly is a never-ending story.

The legal headway we were making in Mexico was encouraging but
also torturously slow. To get faster recognition of the spuriousness of the accusations, I told Marco del Toro that I wanted to appear directly before the Canadian courts for my supposed crimes. I knew that, there, I could easily display the political persecution of the Mexican government. In accordance with my request, Marco designed a strategy that he said had never been attempted but that he believed was our best hope. As soon as I heard his plan, I gave him the go-ahead.

In order to claim political persecution, I would need the Mexican government to formally attempt to extradite me to face a crime. They supposedly had tried to extradite me back at the beginning of the conflict, in 2006, but they hadn't sent any of the revived charges to Canada as basis for extradition—even though government officials
constantly lied to the media and said they had. The Mexican government knew that to successfully extradite me, they would have to convince a Canadian judge that I was a criminal; according to my lawyers David J. Martin and Richard C. C. Peck, they would never do that at this point because their accusations against me had been so thoroughly disproven. They obviously wanted to shield themselves from international ridicule. (Government officials had also pushed hard to have me deported under immigration law, since that route carried the luxury of not having to prove that a crime had been committed. Their efforts failed when Canada, seeing that I was clearly being persecuted politically, issued me a humanitarian visa right away, and later, in 2011, we were granted permanent residence status.)

Marco's plan was to file an amparo arguing that the Mexican government must abide by its obligation to request the extradition. Since they knew exactly where I was, and since Canada has an extradition treaty in place with Mexico, the government was denying me my constitutional rights by not allowing me to face my accusers in a Canadian court. Extradition is not something the Mexican government can request at its discretion, Marco argued; it is a legal obligation. “They have not requested extradition,” Marco said in an interview with journalist Javier Solórzano, “because they are well aware that they hold a very feeble case.”

This amparo filing was highly unusual, and certainly not anticipated by Grupo México or the PGR. Most amparos are presented
against
extradition; I am the first Mexican citizen to present such an appeal because extradition was
not
requested. I challenged the Mexican government to extradite me. The case was presented before the Tenth District Amparo Court in Criminal Matters of the Federal District under file number 16/2009, and was assigned to Judge Gilberto Romero. Romero was baffled by the absurdity of the case against me; he told Marco that, even in a federal court in Mexico City, this was the strangest of the cases he'd seen. The judge was an honest man, and he granted me amparo and required that the Mexican government formally file for my extradition from Canada. When they complied shortly thereafter, their request was
immediately denied. The Canadian judge who reviewed the outstanding warrants could easily see that I was not a criminal; he declared that the allegations against me were not believable. The Mexican authorities were forced to admit that the reason they couldn't compel me to return to Mexico was because the Canadian officials saw through their plot. Canada refused to send me back to Mexico based on crimes that had been fabricated in Los Pinos and the offices of Germán Larrea. Accordingly, my family and I were granted permanent residence—without having to request political asylum. In a letter to me, the Canadian immigration office said, “Based upon a review of all the current information/documentation available to date, there are not in my opinion reasonable grounds to believe that you committed an act in Mexico that constitutes an offence under the laws of Mexico and that, if committed in Canada, would contribute an indictable offence . . . Processing of your application for permanent residence will therefore continue.”

Though it failed in Canada, the PGR did succeed in convincing Interpol to act against me. Though Interpol is active in more than 130 countries, Mexico is not officially one of them—which means that any action on its part against me directly violates Mexican law. Our country became a part of Interpol not through a treaty approved by the Mexican Senate but through an agreement signed by the Mexican ambassador in France. Despite this, Interpol operates in Mexico as part of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) and coordinates with the PGR.

Based on the fraud charges in Sonora and San Luis Potosí, the PGR had requested that Interpol issue an international alert regarding my case. Interpol uses a set of seven color-coded notices, and the PGR wanted a Red Notice for me, which requests the provisional arrest of a person in advance of his or her extradition. The U.S. Justice Department calls the Red Notice “the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today.” Furthermore, around 80 percent of these Red Notices originate from governments or dictators who are attempting to persecute political dissidents. Though Canada has seen my innocence and has refused to act on the Interpol alert, the presence of this unlawful alert makes it difficult for me to travel to any other country.

I presented an amparo against Interpol's involvement in the case, especially since it continued to be in effect after more than two years since the arrest warrants on which it was based were retracted. Despite this, the Mexican authorities have refused to cancel the alert, and it remains in place to this day.

I have come to see that in judicial matters Mexico is a country of lights, shadows, and shades of gray; it is not black and white. There are judges who tremble before any order from Los Pinos, the Department of Labor, or high levels of the PGR. There are other judges who have a taste for the easy money that flows from the pockets of Germán Larrea and his gang. Yet there are some true Mexican judges, upright persons of law who do not crumble under pressure and who cannot be bought. I've met judges who fall into each of these categories. If only we could choose the honest judges to oversee our cases every time, this legal farce might not have dragged on so long.

While I fought my battle against the government's illicit charges, our
colleague Juan Linares was still in jail. Since his unlawful arrest, Juan's ongoing imprisonment had caused an international outcry from the labor community and many human rights activists. The United Steelworkers were especially supportive, raising awareness and significant funds to aid Linares by selling “Free Juan Linares” T-shirts and taking up donations from members. I will forever be deeply appreciative to Steve Hunt, director of the USW's District 3, who had this idea, and to all his colleagues and staff, who have been our family during our stay in British Columbia, as well as to Ken Neumann and Leo Gerard, the USW's national director for Canada and the USW's international president, respectively.

Impeding our defense team's efforts on behalf of Juan was Germán Larrea's refusal to testify in court. He had blatantly disregarded the summons to appear, but Judge José Miguel Trujillo had reduced the penalty for his contempt of court from a thirty-six-hour arrest to a mere fine (and a small payment was, of course, no problem for the majority owner of a company like Grupo México). Based on Judge Trujillo's
decision, Juan pressed charges against him, arguing that the refusal to arrest the witnesses denied him a fair trial. Trujillo had then recused himself. But in January 2011, the case against Linares was reactivated with a new judge: Jesús Terríquez.