Five of the 14 people arrested last Sunday for the March 8th (8M) protests in front of the Campeche State Government Palace were brought before a judge and transferred to the San Francisco Kobén Social Rehabilitation Center (Cereso).
The other nine people—eight women, including a 16-year-old, and one man—were released after paying the corresponding administrative fines, estimated at around 30,000 pesos each.
Among those released was Esli Romero Flores, a doctoral student at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Ecosur), in whose support the institution had been holding demonstrations for her academic career. Her lawyer, Mario Humberto Moo, asserted that no evidence was presented against her and that she had to be released by the authorities.
Four other women and one man were placed at the disposal of the Control Court, and their initial hearing was scheduled for Wednesday morning, March 11, to determine whether they would be formally charged or released on bail.
The detainees will spend the night in their respective sections, the women’s and men’s, at the San Francisco Kobén Penitentiary. They face charges of rioting, property damage, aggravated assault, and one of the women is charged with attempted homicide for throwing gasoline on the shields of the first line of police officers guarding the Government Palace and then setting them on fire.
The Secretary of the Interior, Elisa Hernández Romero, denied that the arrests were arbitrary and asserted that they have proof and evidence that the detainees participated in the riots. She added that the “tools” they used in the attacks were even confiscated from their backpacks. She maintained that some of those arrested even changed their clothes to try to go unnoticed.
Source: jornada
