A year after nine members of his family were murdered by a heavily armed gang that attacked their convoy outside La Mora, Sonora, Adrian LeBaron is questioning Mexican authorities’ commitment to investigating the attack.
The high-profile murder of members of the extended family of fundamentalist Mormons with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship drew international attention to violence in Mexico. The ambush killed three mothers and six children, including LeBaron’s daughter and four grandchildren.
Since the killings, the family has met with President López Obrador on four occasions to discuss the case.
But it’s all been for nothing, Le Baron said. “There has been no progress in the case for six months.”
In an interview with the newspaper Reforma Tuesday, LeBaron blamed corruption in the government.
He lamented that after a year only one person has been charged with the murder of his daughter and grandchildren, even though several people have been arrested by the government in connection with the case as recently as January of this year, including a police chief in Janos, Chihuahua, located near where the killings occurred.
(The federal government announced today that an arrest had been made in the case. The suspect is believed to be a member of the gang known as La Línea.)
“The investigator that did the most work on the case, José Alberto Mancilla Copado, the one that detained everyone [in the case], his contract as an investigator for the federal Attorney General’s Office was not renewed,” LeBaron said. “And since his contract was not renewed, nothing has happened, and I smell a lot of corruption in this department.”
Last month, LeBaron appealed to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to investigate his family’s case, claiming that the Mexican government is not doing its due diligence.
Although 12 people in total were initially detained by authorities in connection with the attack, only one of them was actually charged in connection with the killings.
Source: Reforma (sp)
