A former Mexican special prosecutor will present a public lecture on one of the most significant human rights cases in recent Mexican history at 2 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Graduate Student Lounge in Gearhart Hall as part of the Professor Dick Bennett Scholars at Risk Endowed Lecture Series at the University of Arkansas.

Omar Gómez Trejo will give a talk titled "Inside the Mexican Justice System in the Ayotzinapa Case: The Outsider," which will examine the Mexican justice system through the lens of the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College. Gómez Trejo will address the challenges he faced as a prosecutor, including institutional pressures, political obstacles and the complexity of evidence in the case. He will also discuss the broader human rights crisis in Mexico, efforts to challenge official narratives and the circumstances that led to his departure from the country.

Gómez Trejo served as lead prosecutor of the Special Unit for the Investigation and Litigation of the Ayotzinapa Case from 2019 to 2022. He previously worked for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico and Central America and served as executive secretary of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for the Ayotzinapa case. Most recently, he was a visiting scholar at the Berkeley Law Human Rights Center through the Practitioners at Risk program.

The event is co-sponsored by the Graduate School and International Education, the International Employee Resource Group, Latin American and Latino Studies, the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Program, and the Middle East Studies Program.

The lecture is part of the university's participation in the Scholars at Risk network, an international coalition of higher education institutions and individuals working to protect scholars and promote academic freedom. The endowed lecture series is made possible through a gift from Dick Bennett, U of A professor emeritus of English.

For more information on the event, contact Luis Restrepo or Adnan Alrubaye, co-chairs of the Scholars at Risk Committee, at lrestr@uark.edu or aakhalaf@uark.edu.