Unpunished Crimes I

UNPUNISHED CRIMES -1 WHEREAS the murder cases investigated by the lAPA in its Unpunished Crimes Against ]oumalists project and reported on at the hemisphere conference held in Guatemala ]uly 30 to August 1, 1997 remain unsolved a number of recommendations to govemments to stop the guilty getting away with murder were adopted at the conference THE IAPA GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLVES to urge national congresses to adopt the principie of not permitting the statute of limitations to expire on crimes against the person when they are perpetrated to impede the exercise of freedom of information and expression or when intended to obstruct justice. Also to urge the prohibition of amnesties or pardons of those responsible for these crimes to urge the national congresses to improve legislation to provide for the trial and conviction of the masterminds of murders of those who exercise the right to freedom of expression to encourage constitutional reforms or interpretations to set forth that the laws and regulations goveming states of exception (state of siege) not permit or authorize restrictions or limitations on news coverage and press freedom to enact in those countries where necessary laws prohibiting trial by military or special tribunais of those accused of crimes against joumalists while carrrying out their work to ask the governments of Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico to give the necessary cooperation to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission which, at the request of the IAPA, has agreed to take up the investigation and corresponding legal proceedings in the following cases: Víctor Manuel Oropeza (Case No. 11.740); Guillermo Cano Isaza (Case No. 11.728); Carlos Lajud Catalán (Case No. 11.731); Héctor Félix Miranda (File No. 11.739); lIma Flaquer Azurdia (File No. 11.766); as well as the case of Jorge Carpio Nicolle (File NO.l1.333), which the commission had already begun before the IAPA's investigation to call upon the national attorney general's office to review the investigation of the murder of Guillermo Cano Isaza and the legal findings in the case in order to document possible connections among the actual perpetrators of this crime and the murder of Giraldo Galvis, the Cano family's lawyer, and the irregularities in the investigations and verdicts to urge the attorney general's office to change the venue of the new investigations of the Lajud Catalán case to a court based in Bogotá and to look into why the investigation during the past three years has not included those suspected of masterminding the crime to call upon the attorney general's office to investigate the death threats made to relatives of Lajud Catalán and to provide them due protection and that it extend the investigations into corruption in the signing of municipal contracts related to the crime and the possible involvement of former government officials to insist to the president of Guatemala that he demand that the Public Ministry hold an exhaustive investigation to determine the actual perpetrators and the masterminds of the murder of Jorge Carpio Nicolle and fulfill the obligation of guaranteeing the security of the investigators, plaintiffs, prosecution witnesses and judges to ask the president of Guatemala to encourage a thorough official investigation to determine the whereabouts of lIma Flaquer and to have the attorney general intervene to begin legal proceeedings against those who may be responsible for Flaquer's forced disappearance, a crime whose statute of limitation should not expire under internationallaw and the recent Law of National Reconciliation to urge the Human Rights Office to appoint officials to investigate, in particular, the violent death or disappearance of journalists Jorge Carpio Nicolle and Ilma Flaquer Azurdia; that it be a party in the respective proceedings, supervising strict compliance with the law in those proceedings to urge the Commission For Historical Clarification to conduct a special investigation into the violent death of journalists in the past 3S years, establishing at what stage the respexctive legal proceedings currently are, urging their possible prosecution and closure to insist to the Chihuahua State governor that he order the state attorney general to have the Víctor Manuel Oropeza case taken up agaln, act on the information provided by the IAPA in its report and ask the National Human Rights Commission to provide a copy of ali the documents in its files to urge, given the fact that the Oropeza murder is about to expire under Mexico's statute of limitations amid a widespread and suspicious silence, that the president of Mexico be asked to head a social movement to prevent those guilty of this murder going totallY unpunished because of the said statute of limitations to ask the governor of Baja California state to order the state attorney general to reactivate, as pledged to the IAPA, the investigations into the Héctor Félix Miranda case and bring about the arrest of the mastermind behind the crime.