Faced with the extradition request of the Mexican authorities, Israel acts slowly in the case of Tomás Zerón de Lucio, who was in charge of the Ayotzinapa case, as a punishment to Mexico for supporting the United Nations investigations into possible war crimes against the Palestinians, according to the American newspaper The New York Times.
According to the US newspaper, a senior Israeli official pointed out, on condition of anonymity, that Israel has also not taken action on the asylum request of Zerón de Lucio, who headed the Criminal Investigation Agency of the defunct Attorney General’s Office. (PGR).
“Why should we help Mexico?” The official told The New York Times. He added that the asylum request of Zerón de Lucio, who took refuge in Israel after Mexico pointed him out for irregularities in the investigations into the disappearance of students in Ayotzinapa, could be justified and is being evaluated.
Zerón de Lucio is accused of torture, forced disappearance, and embezzlement; He has lived in Israel since September 2019 and when his visa expired, in December of that year, he applied for asylum.
Israel does not have an extradition treaty with Mexico. Last January, Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Relations, said that what there is is “an agreement of legal cooperation and assistance derived from international agreements that both countries have signed, particularly because in this case there is a well-founded and motivated accusation that already the Israeli authorities were made aware of torture.
“Both countries are obliged to act as if they had tried to extradition when there are crimes or crimes in that order that go against human rights,” he added.
Some Israeli officials attributed the delay in evaluating the extradition request to the large number of asylum requests that Israel receives, but one of them insisted that it had to do with Mexico’s performance in forums such as the Human Rights Council of the UN, in which it supported resolutions to investigate the deaths of Palestinian protesters in 2018, and that of civilians in Gaza during the conflict last May.
The slowness with which Israel has reacted in the Zerón case, he explained, would be part of the give-and-take diplomacy initiated by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by which countries that oppose Israeli policies are diplomatically penalized.
EL UNIVERSAL questioned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and replied that since it is a judicial process in progress, it will not comment.
The Israeli embassy in Mexico declined to comment.
On May 8, EL UNIVERSAL announced that Tomás Zerón de Lucio filed an Amparo lawsuit against the arrest warrant that was issued against him.
Source: eluniversal.com.mx
