The loot is one billion pesos a year. That is the budget of the Autonomous University of Campeche (UACAM) that Governor Layda Sansores decided to appropriate. With this objective, the removal of Rector José Alberto Abud, who was scheduled to run for re-election this February, took place.
The plot of persecution against the academic and the extortion of the members of the university council scream about the times we are going through, where justice is reduced to a mere political instrument.
On Monday, January 12, Rector José Alberto Abud left his home in a van owned by the UACAM. The vehicle was driven by a driver assigned to the agency, and another official of the rectory was also traveling there.
They left in time to fulfill a commitment at the university. Halfway there, a state police patrol ordered them to stop. The officer who approached them reported that the license plates of the vehicle in which they were traveling had been reported as belonging to a stolen truck.
The driver then showed the papers to prove that the university was the owner of that transport. The rector assumed that it was a confusion, so he intervened by asking the officer to let them leave because otherwise he would be late for the event where, shortly, he had to be present.
The patrolman reacted severely and demanded that the passengers get out of the truck. Seconds later, they saw a second patrol car arrive, this time an SUV also dressed in state police emblems.
An officer named Cristiano Kituc Cach got out of that other transport, who approached the civilians to notify them that he had orders to search the vehicle. The rector claimed that he did not have the authority to proceed in that way since the truck was owned by the UACAM and therefore there was no crime to pursue.
Without answering, Commander Kituc Cach opened the passenger door and went straight to the glove compartment, supposedly to check its contents. It took him nothing before he screamed after showing a small plastic bag inside, which contained five grams of cocaine.
That was the signal for the first patrolman and his partner to jump on Rector Abud and violently crash his body against the windows of the vehicle. They then placed the handcuffs on the wrists, squeezing as hard as possible to cause harm. Similarly, those agents proceeded against the other two crew members. That find—the white powder in the glove compartment—was the ultimate proof that these three men were criminals.
They were transferred to the state prosecutor’s office to give a statement. Rector Abud says that while they were unburdening the first proceedings, another policeman appeared ready to make the moment less painful for them.
That official said that Cristiano Kituc Cach was not a right-wing person. He shared that he used to receive instructions to plant drugs, and with this argument, arrest innocent people.
The rector also narrates that Kituc Cach wanted to enter the office where the cocaine had been consigned, but the friendly policeman blocked his way. When Abud was questioned about the motive, he reported that simple possession of cocaine is a less serious crime than possession of other drugs, such as crystal. Despite everything, they had been lucky.
While this was happening, a tremendous blow was about to be dealt against the autonomy of the UACAM. Both the news and the reason for the rector’s arrest penetrated the ears of the academic community with great speed.
In the evening, some members of the university council, belonging to the academic union, called for an extraordinary session of the highest governing body of the UACAM, outside the university campus.
The university council is made up of fifty people; that is, the quorum necessary to meet does not need more than twenty-seven councillors. The dean of this organization, Lenin Hau Heredia, narrates that he was forced to attend the event by individuals who would have shown him images of his wife subdued with a gun, inside a police patrol. They would also have exhibited before their eyes photographs of their daughters and sons, as well as the addresses where they reside.
“You sign, or you know!” he says he was instructed. What should Hau Heredia sign? Well, the act of dismissal of the rector José Alberto Abud and the approving vote to appoint Mrs. Fanny Guillermo Maldonado as the new head of the UAC. There are several testimonies that would confirm the same procedure against other councilors whose vote was forced to consummate that tremendous blow against university life.
The acts of violence undertaken by the police and the operators who extorted the members of the university council would also have the purpose of inhibiting any act of rebellion or resistance.
If the state government planted five grams of cocaine in broad daylight, in the glove compartment of that university vehicle, what else would it not be capable of?
Rector Abud was detained for three days. On January 15, Judge Guadalupe Martínez Taboada evaluated the statement of the patrolmen and the evidence presented, concluding that there were sufficient indications to link the rector to simple possession of cocaine. He imposed conditional release as a precautionary measure while the Public Prosecutor’s Office had to hold the pending investigations.
Anyone who knows José Alberto Abud, a seventy-three-year-old professor, a highly respected and respectable man, knows that this infamy is monstrous. However, in Campeche, nothing that Governor Layda Sansores does is too surprising. She is a dictator who knows no modesty or limits, dishonest, perverse, and without any morals. An outstanding representative of the concentrated power that has been built in my country, and that is capable of the worst arbitrariness.
Yesterday, however, a federal judge granted Rector Abud a definitive suspension with respect to the act of linking to the process decreed by Judge Martínez Taboada. This surprise manifestation of justice would open the door for Abud’s return to the rectory. It is difficult to assume that Governor Sansores will resign herself to defeat. All in all, the news brings hope.
Source: Milenio
