Zeta boss Z-40 already making legal demands, filing suits

Sans handcuffs on his arrival in Mexico City

Guadalajara -
He's been in custody for less than 72 hours, but Los Zetas King of the Pyramid Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales filed a flurry of lawsuits, called amparo petitions, in a Mexico City federal court yesterday. Los Zeta boss, Z-40, arrested near Nuevo Laredo.

Amparo has no precise equivalent in American, British or Canadian law, but attorneys in those jurisdictions will recognize it by another name - the writ of habeas corpus.

Just like its distant Anglo cousin, amparo can be used to regulate the conditions of a prisoner's confinement, and to prevent the deprivation of guaranteed civil rights. The difference in Mexico is that such a proceeding can be filed in advance, before any deprivation has occurred, or is alleged to have occurred. It is a preemptive legal remedy, if a prisoner wants it to be.

So Treviño Morales' attorneys marched into court yesterday, demanding that formal orders be entered protecting him from torture, physical abuse and mistreatment, and from being held incommunicado.

All of those orders probably will be granted as a matter of course - not without some irony, since Z-40 is himself accused of inflicting the first three on hundreds of victims over his long criminal career.

Amparo proceedings have been very good to high profile foreign defendants this year. There was the case of a French woman, and a Canadian one, too. Was justice done in those prosecutions? Not in MGR's opinion. No justice for Mexicans in Florence Cassez ruling.

Feb. 13 - A primer on the always popular Mexican amparo

Footnote: When Treviño Morales arrived at SEIDO (Organized Crime Strike Force) headquarters in Mexico City on Monday, a few waiting press photographers were surprised to see that he was not even handcuffed. Yesterday attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam defended the decision, "made out of respect for his human rights" - quickly adding that Z-40 was well guarded by a marine contingent.

July 20 - Read the first three paragraphs of this story: Mexican A.G. comments on Z-40

July 16 - Mexican army shines again in Treviño Morales takedown

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