The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, IACHR, on Wednesday condemned Mexico for keeping two defendants in “preventive prison” for more than 17 years.
“Mexico is responsible for the violation of the rights to personal integrity, personal freedom, judicial guarantees, equality before the law and legal protection” of Daniel Garcia and Reyes Alpizar, said the court, sitting in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The two men were arrested in 2002 as part of an investigation into the murder of a city councillor in the central Mexican town of Atizapan de Zaragoza, a town in the central state of Mexico.
Placed in preventive prison at the end of the investigation, they were kept there “for more than 17 years,” the court found. It was not until 2022 that they were sentenced to 35 years in prison.
That verdict, which is now under appeal, has no bearing on the Inter-American Court’s decision.
The court noted that the contentious 'unofficial preventive prison' measure — taken without a requisition from the prosecutor’s office — is “per se contrary to the inter-American Convention" on human rights because it does not mention the purpose of the measure or the possible procedural risks it is intended to prevent.
The court consequently enjoined the State of Mexico to abolish “unofficial preventive prison” in order to bring itself in line with the provisions of the Convention.
More than 92.000 people, or about 40% of the nearly 227,000 detainees in Mexico, are currently in “preventive prison,” sometimes for several years, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has denounced.
However, Mexico’s leftist President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has so far refused to abolish the measure, arguing that only parliament can decide on the issue, which he considers essential in the country’s legal arsenal to fight crime.
