A frustrated professor at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) has charged the federal Attorney General’s office with negligence for its failure to take any action against ongoing violence by a group of ex-students.

Since 2013, the university has reported eight acts of violence ranging from property theft and vandalism to assaults with firearms and explosives resulting in property damage and injuries. But in none of the eight cases have the attackers — whose identities are known — been brought to justice.

The most recent incident occurred on Wednesday when a group of masked individuals violently broke into the College of Sciences and Humanities on the Naucalpan campus, where a concert was taking place, and wreaked havoc by assaulting several professors, four of whom had to be hospitalized.

UNAM identified the attackers as three expelled students: José Luis Ramírez Alcántara, Irene Pérez Villegas and Jorge Mario González, who had been criminally charged for previous attacks on university facilities in 2013 and 2014. They are allegedly members of an anarchist group called “Black Bloc.”

A professor and expert in criminal law, Raúl Carrancá, denounced the Attorney General for negligence in the case, emphasizing in an interview that the university has done its part by filing complaints and reporting the attacks. Now it’s up to the Attorney General to do its part by arresting those responsible and putting an end to an “unacceptable” situation, said Carrancá, charging that federal authorities appear “indifferent” to it.

“The university can do no more. If public prosecutors choose apathy and indifference and thus neglect their duties under the Attorney General, it is a very unfortunate situation and it puts university students and professors at risk,” he lamented.

On October 11, 2012, before the attacks began, UNAM president José Narro Robles and the then Attorney General, Marisela Morales, signed an agreement aimed at boosting crime prevention and instilling law and order in and around the university. So far that agreement appears to have borne no fruit.

This case is particularly sensitive, according to Carrancá, since the three former students responsible for the attacks have been fully identified for several years, yet nothing has been done.

Source: Animal Político (sp)