They arrested Raúl and filed a case against him just for his voice

Since January 15, 2021, District Judge Joanna Karina Perea Cano, specialized in the Accusatory Criminal System, linked Jorge Raúl Tirado to the process. Since then he has been imprisoned in the Neza – Bordo Prison.

Mexico City, October 22 (However).- On January 12, 2021, the life of Jorge Raúl Tirado changed dramatically. That day, Raúl, a merchant since the age of 17, father of three children, was arrested for police heavily armed.

The reason: they accused him of being a member of a kidnapping gang.

The evidence: his voice “sounds” like what the authorities have from a series of cases reported in the State of Mexico and because his telephone number appears in a neighborhood database.

In an interview for “Café y Noticias”, Jafet Tirado, Raúl’s sister, said that “life can change from one moment to the next, for you and your entire family by people who care nothing more than inflating numbers and figures.”

He explained that on the day of the arrest, Raúl was working in Nezahualcóyotl and the agents mockingly told him that they had investigated him for four years and had found nothing on him. However, they executed the arrest warrant and told him: “Go ahead.”

His family has waged an exhausting legal fight to prove Raúl Tirado’s innocence and has found themselves with a case that barely holds up.

According to the investigation folder FED/SEIDO/IUDMS-MEX/0000891/2016, the Public Ministry detained Raúl because his telephone number was in the call log of a municipal police officer from Nezahualcóyotl assigned to the neighborhood where Jorge lived with his family. On one occasion, Jorge called the police officer to ask for help after his sister’s vehicle crashed.

At that time, that police officer was being investigated for a kidnapping case, reported at the end of 2016. Referring to Jorge Raúl with the word “boss” was sufficient reason for him to be considered in the case as a “negotiator” of the kidnapping.

Jafet, who is also a journalist, says that the police officer paid attention to him and asked for an ambulance. “In addition, this police officer was guarding the market where my brother had two clothing stores. That was the connection. The police officer referred to him as: ‘Yes, boss. I support you, boss.’” And he adds that the call he had, for the agents, was the clue to investigate him, “because if he said ‘boss’ it was probably a matter of rank.”

That January 12, during his transfer to the facilities of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (FEMDO), the agents showed him portraits of people he did not recognize. In all mockery they told him “don’t worry, you’ll get to know them now.”

The kidnapping victim and his relatives saw photos of Jorge Raúl and denied knowing him; They didn’t recognize his voice either.

The then Deputy Attorney General’s Office Specialized in Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO), which is the unit that began the fabrication of the crime, “used audios from January 1994 to make the voice comparisons with which it was linked to the process, when that year Jorge Raúl was a 16-year-old teenager and the file suggests that the negotiation was done by an adult,” Raúl’s relatives detail.

The investigation folder was started by SEIDO in 2017, the year in which they began to follow him and intervene in his communications. Raúl’s sister said that the person who heads that unit was Gualberto Ramírez, “who is now imprisoned for allegedly fabricating cases, torturing people and creating culprits in the case of the Ayotzinapa 43. It was the unit, which was in charge of this person and his people, for which my brother began to fabricate the crime.”

In 2021, this agency, now converted into FEMDO, requested an arrest warrant against Raúl, for allegedly being related to a kidnapping case reported at the end of 2016. Despite years of follow-up, the only evidence was that he knew a police officer who was accused of kidnapping.

However, Raúl’s legal defense found an expert report showing that there is no coincidence in the voice. “Once arrested, the Prosecutor’s Office takes voice tests again and compares them again and their expert opinion comes out negative. No coincidences. They try to hide that expert opinion, because they did not present it as evidence before the Judge,” explained Jafet.

Later, the FEMDO linked him to two other kidnappings that took place a similar modus operandi and again, the only evidence presented against him are the audios where Raúl’s voice is allegedly that of the negotiator.

Before his arrest, Jorge was dedicated to commerce. Since he was 17, he has been selling decorative lamps and electrical material in different parts of the State of Mexico and Morelos, since his family has had a lamp micro-business for 35 years. He also had two premises for rent in the El Sol neighborhood market, where he was also the treasurer. In 2020 he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing.

Starting this Monday, October 20, the trial stage of Jorge Raúl’s case begins and his family hopes that the Judiciary will take into account all the irregularities that have occurred throughout the process.

The fabrication of the crime

While they were transferring him to the FEMDO facilities, located on Avenida Reforma, in the Cuauhtémoc Mayor’s Office, one of the agents told Jorge Raúl: “Son, we were watching you for 4 years, all I needed was to go into the bathroom with you, and the truth is we never found anything for you, but no way, you were in the wrong. Give it a shot.”

That same day at the FEMDO facilities Jorge had his first hearing by videoconference; There he formally learned of the crime of which he was accused and they gave him a copy of the arrest warrant against him, where he read the theory of his alleged participation in the October 2016 kidnapping.

The son of the owner of a roastery in the city of Neza was kidnapped on October 28 and released on November 4, 2016.

A month later, in December 2016, the victim’s sister was tending the roastery and a man placed an order with her. That man was the municipal police officer of Nezahualcóyotl Benjamín Ramírez López. The young woman saved her number and the WhatsApp photo. He told his brother that the guy had given him a bad feeling. He looked at Benjamin’s photo and recognized him as one of his supposed caretakers while he was in captivity. This information was shared with the police and weeks later, in February 2017, Benjamín’s calls began to be intercepted.

According to the theory that was presented to District Judge José Artemio Zúñiga Mendoza, to issue an arrest warrant, Jorge Raúl would be related as a “negotiator” of the kidnapping because he was in the call log of the municipal police officer of Nezahualcóyotl Benjamín Ramírez López.

From that moment on, the authorities tapped Jorge Raúl’s phone.

According to Jafet Tirado, Raúl’s sister, “it was not unusual for my brother’s calls to appear in this police officer’s record. The relationship arose when he was assigned to guard the quadrant where my brother’s house and my parents’ house are located, in the same Colonia El Sol. In addition, Benjamín patrolled the colony’s market, where my brother and my sister-in-law have 3 premises for rent, with which they cover part of the maintenance of their 3 children. Jorge Raúl was also the treasurer of the market.”

In one of the intercepted calls is when the police officer calls Jorge Raúl “boss” and although it is part of the slang of the uniformed officers, for the prosecution it was sufficient reason to invent the theory that he was their “boss” and that it was related to a crime.

With this they assured that he was the negotiator of the kidnapping and that his voice had “coincidences” with one of the records of the Voice Bank of the Federal Police.

“To our surprise, the voice with which they linked my brother was not that of the negotiator of the October 2016 kidnapping; it was that of a file from December 1994 taken from their voice bank,” adds Jafet Tirado.

This alleged voice analysis, carried out in April 2017, was not carried out by an expert specialized in the matter, it was carried out by a third-grade police officer of the Federal Police. Months later, the FEMDO ordered its own voice expertise to be carried out in which they supposedly also found “coincidences.”

In the investigation folder with folio MEX/0000891/2016 there is not a single audio that proves that Raúl Tirado was related to a kidnapping, despite the fact that his communications were intercepted for almost 4 years. The investigation agents added six audios of their intercepted calls to the folder as evidence and they are a call from the company Totalplay to make a charge; a telephone discussion between Raúl Tirado and his mother and a call to police officer Benjamín to request support for a vehicle crash.

Despite all the irregularities, on January 15, 2021, District Judge Joanna Karina Perea Cano, specialized in the Accusatory Criminal System, linked him to proceedings. Since then he has been imprisoned in the Neza – Bordo Prison.

Months later, the FEMDO issued two more arrest warrants against him for two more cases of kidnapping in the State of Mexico and that the authorities wanted to make it seem like the modus operandi of a “gang of kidnappers.”

For Jorge Raúl’s family, the intention was very clear: to use Jorge Raúl as a scapegoat to justify that they are “working” to provide justice to the victims.

“It is so evident that they only copied the evidence from the first folder and pasted it into the second, and later into the third, which is illegal,” they say.

Added to this is the slowness of the Judiciary to schedule hearings, arguing that they are saturated with work. “And what about my brother’s life? And his three children suffering from not having their father at home? Doesn’t that matter? His eldest son, 22 years old, even had to leave university to do his father’s job and support the family along with my sister-in-law,” says Jorge Raúl’s sister.

Jafet explains that fighting against a folder held by audio, where they say the voice resembles, has been difficult. However, after the reform of the Judiciary they see “a new opportunity for judges to rectify the path.”

“Many have criticized the reform, but for us who are on this side, we say: ‘yes, something has to be done’, I don’t know if it is the way, but on this side of victims you see judges who are not interested or who do not know. Now for us it represents hope. We trust in the new judges to arrive and manage to see the irregularities that the previous ones did not see or did not want to see,” he concluded.