Human Rights Activists Urge ICC to Probe Mexico’s ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Agence France-Presse
go to original July 5, 2017

In 2016, an international civil rights group was the first to accuse Mexico of committing crimes against humanity. The report followed decades of murder, rape and disappearances. (Al Jazeera English)

Rights activists on Wednesday urged the International Criminal Court to probe years of killings and disappearances, as well as torture and detentions, in violence-plagued northern Mexico.

“From 2009… the whole chain of state security authorities colluded with the Zetas (drug cartel) to commit crimes against humanity,” said Jimena Reyes, Americas director for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

With about 100 Mexican associations, the FIDH has published a 72-page report to be presented on Thursday to ICC prosecutors.

It requests the prosecutor’s office open a preliminary probe so “the state of Mexico recognises that crimes against humanity are being committed,” Reyes told a press conference in The Hague.

The violence “has to stop, as the situation has reached an incomprehensible level of cruelty,” she told AFP.

Focusing on the northern state of Coahuila, which borders the US state of Texas, the report analyses some 500 cases including torture, deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearances.

Across Mexico, more than 32,000 people have been reported missing and 200,000 have been killed in raging drug violence, which has seen rival cartels wage war on each other and Mexican security forces.

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