Abraham Antonio Polo Uscanga

Abraham Antonio Polo Uscanga ( 1935 - June 19, 1995 ) was a Mexican judge .

Uscanga completed a university degree with a doctorate. After working as a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor and judge, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the Mexico City capital district (Suprema Corte de Justicia del Distrito Federal, SCJDF) in 1992 .

Justice and government pressure

According to Polo, the president of the SCJDF, Saturnino Aguero Aguirre , tried on several occasions to put him under pressure about his decisions.

For example, when Polo ordered the release of a prisoner on remand for lack of evidence in early 1993, Aguero warned him that Finance Minister Pedro Aspe wished to be detained. In January 1994, Polo released eight people who, in his opinion, were wrongly accused of car bombing in connection with peasant uprisings in Chiapas and the EZLN . Her confessions were extracted under torture. Aguero then warned him again and accused him of lacking “political sensitivity”.

On March 23, 1995, Polo refused to sign arrest warrants for five leaders of the SUTAUR-100 bus union ( Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de Auto-transporte Urbano - Ruta 100 ). In the proceedings initiated four years earlier due to corruption allegations, there was no sufficient suspicion. The union protested against government plans to privatize public transport. Agüero had asked Polo to issue the arrest warrants immediately, pointed out to him the demands of the capital city regent Oscar Espinosa Villarreal and warned him that otherwise he would “have to face the consequences”. The case was withdrawn from him; a short time later his successor issued the desired arrest warrants.

Resignation and reprisals

Polo then announced his resignation on March 27, 1995. He publicly reported on the cases and complained that corruption and intimidation were hindering the Mexican judiciary. He noted excessive interference by the executive branch in the judiciary.

On the evening of April 27, 1995, Polo was abducted by armed men in Mexico City and driven to a rubbish dump while blindfolded. There he was beaten in the legs and stomach with a knife. He was asked whether he had connections to radical left groups and why he had made his allegations against Aguero public. Prior to his release, he was told not to repeat such allegations. As a result of the injuries, Polo had to be treated in hospital. Thereafter, he and his family were threatened several times.

On May 10, 1995, Polo was nearly run over by a vehicle with no license plates while attempting to cross a street in Mexico City. Several weeks later, he publicly accused Aguero of being behind the threats and attacks against him. On June 17, 1995, Polo is said to have written a letter to Aguero, in which he held him responsible if anything happened to him or his family.

assassination

On the night of June 19, 1995, Polo was killed from behind by a single head shot in his son's office. The murder weapon, cleaned of traces, was left behind at the crime scene. He was found a day later after his wife reported his disappearance on June 19. His funeral procession was attended by several thousand members of the SUTAUR-100 union.

Aguero resigned a few weeks later. Allegations that he was involved in the crime were not investigated.

In 1997 Polo was posthumously awarded the Human Rights Prize of the German Association of Judges .

literature

• Felipe Victoria Zepeda: Lo que me dijo Abraham Polo Uscanga: Confidencias antes de su muerte , Mexico, DF, 1995.

Web links

• Tim Golden: Mexico Judge In Union Case Is Shot Dead , New York Times , June 21, 1995
• Joseph F. Suchyta IV: This is Not Independence. The Mexican Judiciary and President Ernesto Zedillo's Reforms of 1994 , 1 LegalBrief LJ 4 (1997)
• Amnesty International : Human Rights Violations in Mexico: A Challenge for the Nineties
• Amnesty International : Human Rights Defenders In Mexico ( Memento of September 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )