They will amparo El Teo and El Pozolero

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article

Subject Matter: El Teo, Teodoro Garza Simental, El Pozolero, The Stew-maker
Recommendation: No Prior subject matter knowledge required

The charges that accuse Teodoro Garcia Simental and Santiago Meza of being members of the Cartel Arellano Felix, pertinent to crimes of organized crime, must be made up of documented proofs and not witness testimony, ordered a Court. The amparo obtained by El Pozolero, dictated that they study the possibility that he was tortured during his detention in 2009.

Reporter: Luis Carlos Sainz
Due to the fact that there was a breach of the legality guarantee against the accused Teodoro Garcia Simental, El Teo, and Santiago Meza Lopez, El Pozolero or The Stew-maker, the imprisoned members of the Cartel Arellano Felix were granted an amparo by a Collegiate Court, so that the criminal case on the charges of organized crime may be examined.

The Third Collegiate Court with residence in Mexicali, resolved on appeal case numbers 633/2016 and 322/2016, respectively, and commented that at least six statements of other members of the criminal group that incriminate them, were obtained in certified copies or various enquirers prior to and added to the inquiry following the complaints. The Judge who condemned them to formal prison and the magistrate who upheld the ruling valued those statements as testimonial evidence, rather than as public documentaries.

In light of these formalities established in the criminal legal systems, the Judges of the review body considered it unnecessary to enter into the merits of the accusation made against Garcia Simental and Meza Lopez, until the responsible authority sets the new value and probative scope of the statements of the witnesses merit contained in the certified copies of various inquiries to which they were reviewing today from the appellants, when it will be possible to see whether there is any prejudice to the appellants.

In addition, the Collegiate Court ordered the Fourth Unit Court of the Fifteenth Circuit to make a clear statement on the investigation of the charge of organized crime attributed to El Teo, who was detained in January of 2010 and to El Pozolero, captured a year earlier. Both were tried , in this criminal case, for actions committed between 2002 and 2005, and the Judge convicted them with the Federal law against organized crime, reformed on January 23rd of 2009.

As for El Pozolero, the man who confessed to having dissolved more than 300 human bodies in boiling caustic soda, the amparo he obtained ordered that, in the case of the Judge of origin, that he reissues a prison sentence, he takes the necessary steps to find, at least any indication of the alleged acts of torture by the appellant accused here.

The protective guilty verdict adds to the psychology experts test must be carried out in accordance with the Istanbul protocol, in order to resolve whether the existence of the reported torture in the case of violation of a fundamental right, but not to resolve the legal situation within the constitutional term, but by the repercussions this could later lead to in the process, transcending the final judgment.

Teodoro, El Teo or El Tres Letras, who also uses the name Eduardo and Diego, Garcia Simental, former head of some CAF cells, and Santiago Meza Lopez, a bricklayer, who was nicknamed, El Pozolero de Teo, are part of the bloodiest history of Tijuana in the new millennium.

Both characters are being prosecuted in criminal case 140/2014 of the First District Court of Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Baja California for their probable responsibility int he commission of organized crime for the purpose of committing crimes of kidnapping and illegal deprivation of freedom in the mode of qualified abduction. The formal prison order was issued on July 31st of 2014.

According to the file, the facts attributed to the alleged offenders occurred on April 26th of 2005, when they kidnapped a merchant who shortly before 8 o’clock in the morning arrived at his diaper business located on Manuel J Cluthier Boulevard, in the La Cienaga Colonia, in Tijuana.

When descending from this Chevrolet Avalance pickup, the victim was deprived of his freedom by an armed commando that transferred him to a property on Gato Bronco Boulevard, in the Guaycura Ampliacion Colonia. After 65 days of negotiations, the kidnappers finally obtained a ransom of $267,000 and released the captive on June 29th of that year.

The kidnap accusation was filed by the brother of the victim after receiving a call from and unknown subject using a radio communication device by Nextel owned by his brother. In the message he was informed of the situation of his brother and the kidnapper demanded that release him, he would have to pay 2 million dollars. The voice, later recognized during surveys, was that of Teodoro Garcia Simental.

Even though the detentions of Garcia and Meza occurred in different years, it wasn’t until July of 2014 when both were served with arrest warrants for their alleged responsibility in the charges. After being formally declared prisoners, Lawyers appealed the ruling, which was read by a single Court and not in their favour.

The defense of El Teo argued that there was insufficient data to prove the involvement of their client in the crimes he was charged with, and that his own evidence was not accredited. In the same manner, that the statements of the victims and one of the witnesses only identified Garcia Simental through photographs.

However, the Judge and Judge of the Court of Appeal pointed out that, contrary to the affirmed by the defense, that the statements of the other members of the CAF, arrested on the same charges, said that the leader of their cell was El Teo, the victim recognized him as the person who spoke to his brother on radio.

Macabre crimes

Teodoro Garcia Simental is identified as a leader of sections of the CAF, as an intellectual and material author; while Santiago Meza Lopez was recognized as belonging to the same cell and among other functions had to dispose of the bodies of the people that the group had killed. Some victims were abandoned in the streets and other disintegrated through the process of liquefaction, with a corrosive liquid based on caustic soda.

El Pozolero, prosecuted for the kidnapping of the merchant, did not make any direct threats to him; however justice officials established that the mechanics of the facts and the manner in which some of the kidnapped recognized his operation within the criminal cell, leads them to believe he is  a member of the criminal cell and establishes him as a material author of the said offense.

The way the cell of El Teo operated, of which Meza Lopez was integrated, resembled a production line, in which some of the subjects, regardless of the multifunctionallity they claim, were directly responsible for depriving the freedom of the subjects, others provided security and the weapons they carried, while others were halcones for the escape routes.

In order to prove organized crime, the Judge stated, others took custody of safe houses, with the kidnapped and or drugs, others killed those who had not had their ransom paid or belonged to rival groups, as well as others who disposed of the bodies by liquefaction in a solution of caustic soda and water.

Although El Pozolero insisted on denying his participation in the kidnapping events, the victims recognized him as one of the persons travelling in the vehicle in which they were transferred to tone of the safe houses where they were detained. In addition, the criminal cell described above links him as an essential function of the kidnappings, as was the disposal of the bodies without trace, which made it difficult to persecute any group and let them carry on with the work they performed.

At the time, El Pozolero stated that “the people who carried the bodies of the dead always had escort patrols, which had panelled vans, where the bodies were hidden, that the van driver always had an accomplice, and tow more escorts, more were waiting at the place where the disposal barrels were waiting to make the “stew” in the place known as La Gallera.

Meza Lopez also said that he did not know the origin of the victims and that he always received the bodies dead. He did not see their faces because they had their heads wrapped in grey parcel tape, and when they were put into the barrels with the caustic soda with water, they only cut the tape at the nape of the neck and didn’t remove it.

In the statements of the man who received 700 dollars per body he disposed of, of which he spent 400 dollars in materials to dispose of each body, there is a passage in which he says that when bought the materials to dispose of the bodies, he bought four or five bulbs of garlic and a litre of cooking oil. Before starting the dissolving process in the chemical mixture, Meza began to fry the garlic,, when the oil was hot, the smell of it overpowered the smell of the caustic soda emitted when he was “stewing a body”.

These multiple facts have not been settled in the criminal case for the kidnappings of the merchant, but have been in previous investigations and proceedings in various Courts in which members of the CAF including El Teo and El Pozolero have been convicted.

Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana