Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Mexico.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Mexico. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the courtroom. Perhaps your paper might focus on some of
the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst,
sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing water. On the other hand, you might choose to
write about the people acting in an official capacity who perpetrate such
cruelty. There is a lot to the subject
of Torture by Authorities. Scan other
countries as well as this one. Draw
comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** Mexico president to
order release of federal prisoners wd/aw (Reuters, AFP),
30 July 2021 [ Long
URL ] [accessed 30 July
2021] Mexican President
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that he
will soon sign a decree to release thousands of federal prisoners under
certain conditions. The order would
apply to federal prisoners who were victims of torture. The decree would
also liberate prisoners aged 75 and older who have not committed serious
crimes, along with inmates over 65 with chronic illnesses who have not
committed grave offenses. Last but not least,
the order will free long-term prisoners who have not yet been sentenced for
non-serious offenses. Non-sentenced prisoners who have been behind bars for
more than 10 years will be released as part of the decree. The Mexican
government under Lopez Obrador has promised to
eradicate the torture of prisoners, after harsh criticism from the UN and
human rights organizations. Beatings, sexual
and psychological abuse and other methods have reportedly been used on
prisoners. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mexico U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/mexico/
[accessed 28 July
2021] DISAPPEARANCE There were reports of
numerous forced disappearances by organized crime groups, sometimes with
allegations of state collusion. Investigations,
prosecutions, and convictions for the crime of forced disappearance were
rare. In February a
federal judge in Monterrey sentenced five marines to 22 years in prison and
ruled the secretary of the navy should publicly apologize for the 2013 forced
disappearance of Armando Humberto del Bosque Villarreal in Colombia, Nuevo
Leon. Hunters found the body of del Bosque in a forest outside the naval base
two months after he disappeared. Nationwide, the CNB
reported the exhumation of the remains of at least 2,361 persons in 1,413
clandestine graves between December 1, 2018, and November 30, 2020. In July
the CNB reported that between January 2006 and June 2020, officials located
3,978 clandestine graves and exhumed 6,625 bodies. The same report noted that
between December 1, 2018, and November 2020, of the 894 bodies identified,
506 were returned to families. TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Federal law
prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment, as well as the admission of confessions obtained through illicit
means as evidence in court. Despite these prohibitions, there were reports of
security forces torturing suspects. In November 2019
the NGO Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights
released a 12-year study on torture, which registered 27,342 investigations
from 2006 to 2018. There were 10,787 federal investigations and 16,555
state-level investigations, of which 50 resulted in sentences, 15 of which
were later exonerated. Impunity for
torture was prevalent among the security forces. NGOs stated authorities
failed to investigate torture allegations adequately. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/mexico/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 15 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE
OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Mexicans are
subject to the threat of violence at the hands of several actors, including
individual criminals, drug cartels that operate with impunity,
and police officers who are often susceptible to bribery. Mexicans are
particularly vulnerable to enforced disappearances, which remains a
tremendous challenge for the government despite efforts to address the
missing-persons backlog in recent years. In addition, Mexicans in police
custody are at risk of torture by the authorities, and must also navigate a
prison system where due process and physical safety are in short supply. Abuses during
criminal investigations are rife .... Former police
officers detained in Mexico on charges of torture Prensa Latina News Agency,
Mexico, 18 March 2020 www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=53521&SEO=former-police-officers-detained-in-mexico-on-charges-of-torture [accessed 7 April
2020] Two elements of the
now-defunct Federal Police of Mexico were apprehended under the charges of
torturing some of the detainees for the disappearance of the 43 students from
Ayotzinapa, the entity confirmed today. The detainees allegedly
subjected several detainees to torture in October 2014 to compel them to
plead guilty to the disappearance of the missing 43 pedagogy students. Mexico vows to
eradicate torture of detainees Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters, Geneva, 25 April 2019 [accessed 12 May
2019] Activists said on
Wednesday that Mexico’s security forces and prison authorities commit
systematic torture and rape of detainees with “near-universal” impunity. Asphyxiation and
electric shocks are used, as well as sexual violence, 120 groups said in a
joint statement. Out of 8,335
torture investigations, the federal special prosecutor’s office reported last
year that it had brought charges in only 17 cases, the groups said. Mexico
human rights commission accuses 32 marines of torture The Associated Press
AP, Mexico City, 6 September 2018 www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article217924700.html [accessed 6
September 2018] www.apnews.com/398a4bbbf9f04fc3a02ebb434b18ccbf [accessed 8 January
2019] Mexico's National
Human Rights Commission is calling on federal authorities to investigate the
allegedly illegal detention and torture of 17 people by marines enlisted in
the country's fight against drug cartels. The commission
issued a statement Thursday detailing sexual assaults, beatings, electric
shocks and suffocation committed by marines against their captives before
they were turned over to federal law enforcement. In
Mexico missing students case, suspects allege torture Mark Stevenson,
Associated Press, 10 May 2016 www.startribune.com/in-mexico-missing-students-case-suspects-allege-torture/378852371/ [accessed 10 August
2016] lasvegassun.com/news/2016/may/10/in-mexico-missing-students-case-suspects-allege-to/ [accessed 10 August
2016] In previously
unseen court documents obtained by The Associated Press, 10 of the suspects
described a chillingly similar script: First the questions, then the punches,
electric shocks and partial asphyxiations with plastic bags; then, finally,
the threats to kill their loved ones unless they confessed to stories that
backed up the government's line. Some said they were
given planted evidence or prefabricated stories to support the government's
conclusions. "They were
giving me electric shocks in the testicles and all over my body," one of
the suspects, Patricio Reyes Landa, a gang member who was detained a month
after the students vanished, told a judge in July, according to the documents
obtained by AP. "All this time, it was about two and a half hours, I was
blindfolded and they were hitting me." "A person came
up and took off my blindfold and showed me a photo of my family — my two
daughters, my wife and my brother," he said. "He said if I didn't
do everything they told me to, they were going to rape my daughters. ... I
told them I was going to do everything they asked." Leaked
Video Shows Mexican Police Torturing Detained Man telesur, 14 May 2016 www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Leaked-Video-Shows-Mexican-Police-Torturing-Detained-Man-20160514-0018.html [accessed 9 August
2016] [accessed 8 January
2019] The video,
submitted anonymously to local media El Proceso, Aristegui Noticias, and
Animal Politico through the free speech platform MexicoLeaks, shows an
alleged officer of the south central state of Mexico's Attorney General’s
office repeatedly suffocating Silverio Rodriguez Martinez by forcing a
plastic bag over his head. Mexico’s Commission
for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights has said that evidence suggests
torture is a widespread practice among police forces throughout Mexico as part
of criminal investigations. Surviving
death: Police and military torture of women in Mexico Amnesty
International, 28 June 2016, Index number: AMR 41/4237/2016 www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr41/4237/2016/en/ www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-amnesty-international-idUSKCN0ZE2R5 [accessed 2 August
2016] Torture is
widespread in Mexico’s “war on drugs”, but the impact on women has been
largely ignored or downplayed. This report analyses the stories of 100 women
who have reported torture and other forms of violence during arrest and
interrogation by police and armed forces. Severe beatings; threats of rape
against women and their families; near-asphyxiation, electric shocks to the
genitals; groping of breasts and pinching of nipples; rape with objects, fingers,
firearms and the penis – these are just some of the forms of violence
inflicted on women, in many cases with the intention of getting them to
“confess” to serious crimes. Torture
in Mexico International
Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (irct) Developed in
collaboration with the Collective Against Torture and Impunity (CCTI), July
2014 irct.org/assets/uploads/pdf_20161122060341.pdf [accessed 31 July
2017] Torture is systematically
practised by the Mexican government, coupled with acts of arbitrary
detention, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. It remains a
common method in the fight against drug trafficking and the criminalisation
of social protest. Torture
is out of control in Mexico. Implement the Istanbul Protocol Amnesty
International [accessed 17 May
2015] Mexico's military
broke into Claudia Medina Tamariz's home in Veracruz in 2012 and took her to
a local military base. According to her testimony, she was tortured with
electric shocks, sexually assaulted, beaten, and kicked and left tied to a
chair in the scorching afternoon sun. She is one of countless people tortured
in Mexico. Claudia’s torture complaint is still with the Federal Attorney
General's Office, and there has been no progress in the investigation into
her accusations of torture. Mexican
Senate approves reform on enforced disappearances and torture EFE News Service,
Mexico City, 30 April 2015 www.laprensasa.com/309_america-in-english/3078472_mexican-senate-approves-reform-on-enforced-disappearances-and-torture.html [accessed 10 May
2015] [accessed 28 August
2016] The Mexican Senate has
unanimously approved a bill empowering the Congress to pass legislation on
enforced disappearances and human rights violations such as torture and
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The National Registry
of the Disappeared or Missing Persons says 25,821 people in the country have
been subjected to enforced disappearances or torture without reason, and that
no authorities have been held accountable. Omar Fayd of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party argued that lawmakers could not turn a deaf
ear to the demands of society, alluding to the mass protests that have taken
place in the country since the disappearance of 43 students, allegedly
perpetrated by corrupt authorities and organized crime groups last September
in the state of Guerrero. Experts of the
Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, which is investigating the case of
the missing students, urged the Mexican Senate to approve the constitutional
reform on enforced disappearances in April. Reports in recent
months by U.N. officials asserting that enforced disappearances and torture
are widespread practices in Mexico have further put pressure on the country
to change. UN Investigator
Outs Mexico's Effort to Whitewash Torture Report Elisa Vásquez, PanAm
Post, 6 April 2015 panampost.com/elisa-vasquez/2015/04/06/un-investigator-outs-mexicos-effort-to-whitewash-torture-report/ [accessed 13 April
2015] UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture Juan Méndez says he was pressured by the Mexican government
to alter the results of an investigation that determined torture in the
country is “widespread” and goes virtually unpunished. “Torture and
ill-treatment in the moments following detention and before detainees are
brought before a judge are generalized in Mexico and occur in a context of
impunity,” states the report. “The aim usually
[is] to inflict punishment or to extract confessions or information. There is
evidence of the active participation of police and ministerial police forces
from almost all jurisdictions and of the armed forces, but also of tolerance,
indifference or complicity on the part of some doctors, public defenders,
prosecutors and judges.” Mexico’s Foreign
Ministry Secretary José Antonio Meade further challenged the rapporteur’s
account and claimed the Mexican government has made “significant progress” in
13 of the 14 open cases Méndez studied for his report. Torture in Mexico Is
out of Control Olivier Acuña,
teleSUR, 22 March 2015 www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Torture-in-Mexico-Is-out-of-Control-20150322-0002.html [accessed 7 April
2015] www.telesurenglish.net/news/
Torture-in-Mexico-Is-out-of-Control-20150322-0002.html [accessed 8 January
2019] the number could be
much greater, said David Sanchez, human rights defender. The practice of
torture by security forces in Mexico is out of control, human rights defender
David Sanchez told teleSUR on Sunday, adding that complaints by victims of
cruel and unusual punishment by police and military have increased by about
600 percent compared to 2003. “The fact is that in all the history of
human rights violations in Mexico, only one case has actually ended in a
sentencing. All other case of torture go unpunished and this is a deterrent
for people to lay charges,” he said. 20
Mexico state officials under investigation for torture, cover-up in military
killings Associated Press,
Mexico City, 15 January 2015 www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/15/20-state-officials-under-investigation-for-torture-cover-up-in-mexico-military/ [accessed 26 March
2015] [accessed 8 January
2019] At least 20 Mexico
state officials are under investigation in the cover-up of threats and
torture of women who were witnesses to the alleged killing of prisoners by
soldiers last year, state authorities said Wednesday. In a recent
interview with The Associated Press, one of the witnesses described the
torture she suffered. She said that when she refused to sign a false
statement that all 22 had died in a shootout with soldiers, state officials
kicked her in the ribs, shoved her head into a toilet and hit her in the
head. Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] MEXICO MILITARY ABUSES AND
IMPUNITY
- In June, military personnel opened fire on a group of 22 civilians who were
inside an empty warehouse in Tlatlaya, state of Mexico, killing all of them.
One soldier was injured during the incident.
Accounts from witnesses and a report by the CNDH said that at least 12
civilians were extrajudicially executed. State prosecutors detained two of
the three surviving witnesses, beat them, repeatedly asphyxiated them with a
bag, and threatened them with sexual abuse to force them to confess to having
links to people killed in the incidents, and to say that the military was not
responsible for the killings, according to the CNDH. They also threatened and
mistreated a third witness, and forced the three witnesses to sign documents
they were not allowed to read. TORTURE - Torture is
widely practiced in Mexico to obtain forced confessions and extract
information. It is most frequently applied in the period between when victims
are arbitrarily detained and when they are handed to prosecutors, when they
are often held incommunicado at military bases or other illegal detention
sites. Common tactics include
beatings, waterboarding, electric shocks, and sexual torture. Many judges
continue to accept confessions obtained through torture, despite the
constitutional prohibition of such evidence. Surviving Mexico’s
torture epidemic Amnesty
International, 26 November 2014 www.amnesty.org/en/news/surviving-mexico-s-torture-epidemic-2014-11-26 [accessed 14
December 2014] Once at the police
station, Rogelio and his friends were locked into small rooms where the
brutal interrogation began. “Where do you work?
Who do you work for?” the officers shouted as the beatings continued, barely
leaving any time for him to respond. They put a cloth on
his face and waterboarded him, while screaming: “You are going to say you
work for the drug dealers. Who is your boss? Your friends are already
confessing and they are blaming you.” Rogelio’s cries for
help joined similar screams emanating from the other cells. Over the following
days, the five men were illegally taken to various police facilities, where
the torture only escalated. Rogelio was
repeatedly told his pregnant wife and child would be killed if he didn’t
admit to being part of the drug cartel. A plastic bag was placed over his
head several times, in a simulated attempt to suffocate him. He was beaten
and kicked so hard that, a year later, 30 marks and scars were still visible
on his body. Mexico releases
Honduran man after five years without trial Oakland Ross,
Feature Writer, Toronto Star, 17 Oct 2014 [accessed 22
November 2014] Identified by Amnesty
International as a “prisoner of conscience,” Angel Amilcar Colon Quevedo
finally walked free this week after Mexico’s federal attorney-general decided
to drop the charges against him. While in prison he
was “beaten, asphyxiated using a plastic bag, stripped, forced to perform
humiliating acts and was subjected to racist abuse,” according to an Amnesty
International report on the escalating use of torture in Mexico. Mexico: Out of
control: Torture and other ill-treatment in Mexico Amnesty International,
4 September 2014 www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR41/020/2014/en [accessed 22
November 2014] www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR41/020/2014/en/468aee5a-ecc3-470f-9387-a8a10b5670cc/amr410202014en.pdf [accessed 22
November 2014] Anyone arrested in
Mexico is potentially at risk of torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment. Torture and other ill-treatment are
frequently used as investigative tools to get “information” and “confessions”
from suspects or from people simply caught at the wrong time or place. In
this report Amnesty International’s research findings demonstrate how
safeguards against torture are ineffective and how investigations are either
non-existent or biased against the complainant. [PAGE 12] METHODS OF TORTURE -- The most common
methods of torture and other ill treatment documented by Amnesty
International in Mexico are:
Beatings with fists, boots, gun butts, wooden bars;
Carbonated water or chilli being forced up detainees’ nostrils;
Death threats;
Electric shocks to body parts including toes and testicles;
Mock executions and threat of enforced disappearance;
Near asphyxiation using plastic bags or wet cloths and waterboarding;
Stress positions;
Rape and other forms of sexual violence
Threats against detainees’ families Seven things you
need to know about torture in Mexico Katie Young, Amnesty
International, 2 September 2014 www.amnesty.org.au/hrs/comments/35453/ [accessed 16
September 2014] www.amnesty.ca/blog/seven-things-you-need-to-know-about-torture-in-mexico [accessed 31 July
2017] 1. REPORTS OF
TORTURE ARE 600% HIGHER THAN IN 2003 Torture in Mexico
is, quite frankly, out of control. In the last ten years alone, there has
been a 600 per cent rise in the number of reported cases of torture. Between
2010 and the end of 2013, the National Human Rights Commission received more
than 7,000 complaints of torture. An Amnesty survey
recently found that a whopping 64 per cent of Mexican citizens are afraid
they would be tortured if they were ever to be detained by the police. In the
same survey, Australia and China came out at 16 per cent and 25 per cent
respectively. 2. HOW ARE PEOPLE
TORTURED IN MEXICO? Torture techniques in
Mexico all have one thing in common: they’re brutal. Survivors from
around the country report a multitude of torture techniques, including mock
executions, cruel beatings, stress positions, asphyxiation, electric shocks
and sexual violence.. Drop unfair charges
against tortured prisoner of conscience Amnesty
International, 23 July 2014 [accessed 27 July
2014] Ángel Colón was
struck in the ribs, forced to walk on his knees, kicked, and punched in the
stomach by the police. He was then blindfolded and taken to a military base where
he could hear the screams of other detainees. He was hit repeatedly and
threatened that the same would happen to him. A plastic bag was put over his
head to provoke near asphyxiation. He was stripped and forced to lick clean
the shoes of other detainees and perform humiliating acts. He was repeatedly
called a “fucking nigger” (“pinche negro”). After 16 hours of
such torture and other ill-treatment, Ángel was forced to make a
“confessional” statement to the federal public prosecutor. Although he subsequently
described his experiences to a judge and said that his earlier statement was
false and extracted after torture, it still remains in the case file against
him. His allegations
were later corroborated by independent forensic experts, but no official
investigation has been carried out into his treatment, in violation of
Mexico’s obligations under international human rights law. Furthermore, the
charges against Ángel Colón - belonging to a criminal gang – are being
processed on the basis of the information provided under torture. Bashings, rape and
waterboarding: Victims of torture speak out as part of Amnesty
International’s Stop Torture Campaign Debra Killalea,
news.com.au, 30 May 2014 www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/bashings-rape-and-waterboarding-victims-of-torture-speak-out-as-part-of-amnesty-internationals-stop-torture-campaign/story-fni0xs61-1226936945435 [accessed 2 June
2014] Ms Mendez travelled
to San Salvador Atenco, in the state of Mexico, in May 2006 to document police
abuses against protest demonstrators.
But she never expected to be subjected to horrific abuse herself. She claims she was violently interrogated
for being a human-rights activist before being hit across the head, and
dragged inside a police bus. She heard screams
of pain and felt people on the floor of the bus beneath her as officers
forced her to walk over them. “As I
reached what felt like the end of the bus, they pushed me down and started
beating me again, trying to suffocate me and then they raped me,” she told
Amnesty International. “I could not
believe what was happening. As they were abusing me, they forced me to make
sexual comments to them and said they were going to kill me.” The beatings and abuse lasted hours and
she eventually arrived at the state prison. Torture of
detainees common in Mexico E. Eduardo Castillo,
The Associated Press AP, Mexico City, 2 May 2014 bigstory.ap.org/article/un-torture-detainees-common-mexico [accessed 14
September 2014] www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20140502/lt--mexico-torture/ [accessed 28 August
2016] www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-un-torture-of-detainees-common-in-mexico-2014may02-story.html [accessed 31 July
2017] The torture of
detainees in Mexico continues to be widespread and occurs between the time of
arrest and when suspects appear before a judge, a United Nations official
said Friday after a two-week probe of issue. U.N. special
rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez said that signs of torture are found on
people arrested by all levels of authority, from the military down to local
and state police. Mendez spoke in a
press conference at the end of his visit to Mexico, where he met with
officials, activists and victims of torture. He said practices
reported include beatings with fists, feet and sticks, asphyxiating with
plastics bags and electric shock to the genitals. Juarez police officer
pleads guilty to torture Daniel Borunda, El
Paso Times, 10 January 2014 www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24871624/juarez-police-officer-pleads-guilty-torture [accessed 12 Jan
2014] [accessed 28 August
2016] According to the
state attorney general's office, police blindfolded the men, covered their
mouths with tape and took them to an old juvenile detention center nearby,
where the men were beaten because police wanted to know where they sold
drugs. Prosecutors said that
one of the men was forced to swallow three bullet casings and then had a gun
placed in his hand and told to kill his friend, who had been beaten. When the
victim refused, a police officer placed a baseball bat on the outside of his
rectum and twisted the bat around. The men were then
beaten again and forced to drink alcohol before being taken to the Delicias
police station and were booked on public disturbance charges, prosecutors
said. At the police
station, the man who swallowed the bullet casings began having seizures and
was taken to a hospital. An X-ray at the hospital found objects in the man's
stomach. Doctors gave the man medicine that helped expel them. 10 Juarez police
officers charged with torture Armando V. Durazo,
El Paso Times, 14 December 2013 www.elpasotimes.com/latestnews/ci_24720429/10-juarez-police-officers-charged-torture [accessed 15 Dec
2013] [accessed 28 August
2016] The officers are
charged with breaking into a home at about 10 p.m, on Dec. 15, 2012, beating
a couple and one of their three children. A press statement
from the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office said the family was in their
home when they heard a commotion outside, which were the officers. Once the
officers made their way inside the home, the statement said, they started beating
the couple and a 16-year-old boy while asking them where the weapons, money,
jewelry and credit cards were located. When they failed to
respond, the officers placed plastic bags over their heads in an attempt to
asphyxiate them, the press release said. Officials said the
officers then ransacked the home and took tools, electronic devices, money,
jewelry and Avon products. Activists Hail
Release of Mexican in Torture Case E. Eduardo Castillo,
The Associated Press AP, Mexico City, 8 November 2013 bigstory.ap.org/article/activists-hail-release-mexican-torture-case [accessed 14
September 2014] www.mercurynews.com/ci_24478547/groups-hail-release-mexican-torture-case [accessed 28 August
2016] newsok.com/article/feed/613922 [accessed 31 July
2017] Arzate said
soldiers snatched him off the street, gave him electric shocks and
asphyxiated him. He claimed they also said that his wife would be raped and
killed unless he admitted to a role in the 2010 killing of 15 mostly
teenagers at a party in Ciudad Juarez. The massacre was one of the worst
attacks since Mexico launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006. A judge had
previously said that his forced account was too detailed to be fabricated. Torture in Mexico:
"I Still Think it was a Nightmare" Amnesty
International, 30 June 2013 [accessed 1 July
2013] On 2 February 2011,
the 30-year-old mother of four had just dropped three of her children at
school in the city of Ensenada, in northern Mexico, when two men wearing
balaclavas forced her into a white van and took her away. Until then, Miriam didn't know the men
were soldiers or that she was being taken to a military barracks. She was
blindfolded and her hands were tied.
“I didn’t know who they were or anything, and when I asked them they
put a gun to my head and told me to shut up or they would blow my head off,”
she told Amnesty International. Miriam was then
taken to a military barracks in the city of Tijuana, around 84 kilometres
away, where she was kept for a week. “In that place they
tortured me: they repeatedly put wet
cloth over my face and poured water over it so I couldn’t breathe. They gave
me electric shocks,” she explained.
Miriam later described how she was repeatedly raped by soldiers while
she was there. The soldiers were
trying to force her to “confess” to trafficking drugs through a military
checkpoint. She denies any involvement and asserts that she was travelling to
visit her mother who lives 45 kilometres away, a journey she took several
times a week. After seven days of
torture, Miriam was taken to a pre-charge detention centre in Mexico City.
While the abuse stopped, she describes how she would jump at every noise,
terrified that her tormentors had returned. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/MEX/CO/4
(2007) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/mexico2007.html [accessed 3 March
2013] 22. The Committee
is concerned about reports that, despite legal provisions to the contrary,
the judicial authorities continue to accord evidentiary value to confessions
obtained using physical or psychological violence, if they are corroborated
by other evidence. The State party
should ensure that any statement which is established to have been obtained
as a result of torture shall not be invoked, either directly or indirectly, as
evidence in any proceeding, in accordance with article 15 of the Convention,
except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement has
been made. Human Rights
Overview Human Rights Watch [accessed 13 January
2013] Mexico’s military
and police have committed widespread human rights violations in their efforts
to combat violent drug cartels—including killings, torture and
disappearances—which have only exacerbated a climate of lawlessness and fear
in many parts of the country. These violations persist, and in fact have
increased, because the members of security forces who commit them are
virtually never held accountable. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 ARBITRARY DETENTION
AND TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT There was
widespread use of arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment to obtain information
and confessions from suspects under interrogation. The CNDH reported
receiving 1,662 complaints of torture and ill-treatment during the year.
There were no reported convictions for torture during the year. Pre-charge judicial
detention (arraigo) continued to be used routinely
by federal and state prosecutors to hold suspects for up to 80 days pending
investigation. Arraigo detention seriously
undermined the rights of detainees, whose access to lawyers, family and
medical attention was severely restricted, creating a climate in which
reports of torture and ill-treatment were routine. In November, the UN
Committee against Torture called for the abolition of arraigo.
However, only the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Yucatán eliminated its use. On 18 January,
three brothers – Juan Antonio, Jesús Iván and 14-year-old Luis Adrián
Figueroa Gómez – were picked up by judicial police in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state. They were reportedly beaten,
threatened and given electric shocks to force them to confess to extortion of
local businesses. Their statements were video recorded and filed as evidence.
However, signs of torture were ignored by officials, when the three were
remanded in custody. They filed a complaint of torture, but by the end of the
year there was no information about any investigation into their allegations. On 1 December,
violent protests in Mexico City against the inauguration of the new President
resulted in 97 detentions. The majority of those detained were released in
the following days. The Federal District Human Rights Commission documented
instances of ill-treatment and torture as well as arbitrary detentions. On 27
December the remaining 14 detainees were released on bail. There was no
information available on the investigation into alleged abuses committed by
police. EXCESSIVE USE OF
FORCE AND EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS The CNDH recorded
at least 25 killings of bystanders in armed encounters between criminal gangs
and the security forces. Failure to conduct full investigations of the vast majority
of killings prevented identification of many victims, clarification of
circumstances of the killings, and the prosecution of perpetrators. ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES In December, a
leaked report from the Federal Attorney General’s Office indicated that there
had been at least 25,000 reports of abductions, disappearances and missing
persons throughout the country during President Calderón’s
administration. Criminal gangs were responsible for the majority of
abductions, but public officials were also implicated in some cases. The CNDH
was investigating 2,126 cases of reported enforced disappearances. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/mexico [accessed 13 January
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] The justice system
remains plagued by delays and unpredictability. In rural areas, respect for
laws by official agencies remains tenuous, and coordination between federal
authorities and the state and local police forces—which comprise nearly 95
percent of all police—is problematic. Lower courts and law enforcement in
general are undermined by widespread bribery. A significant majority of
crimes go unreported because the notoriously underpaid police are viewed as
either inept or in league with criminals. Torture, arbitrary arrest, and
abuse of prisoners persist in many areas. In 2008, a video emerged of police
in Guanajuato state teaching trainees how to use torture to extract
information from detainees. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/62736.htm [accessed 13 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/62736.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Although the law
prohibits such practices, they persisted, and torture in particular continued
to be a serious problem. Despite the law's provisions to the contrary,
confessions obtained by torture often were admitted as evidence (see section
1.e.). Many citizens distrusted the justice system, including law enforcement
officials, and were reluctant to register official complaints. A May study by
the Chamber of Deputies Center for Social Studies and Public Opinion found
that for every complaint filed with authorities, two or three complaints were
not filed because the public perceived the justice system as ineffective. Authorities rarely punished
officials for torture, which continued to occur in large part because
confessions were the primary evidence in many criminal convictions (see
section 1.e.). Human rights groups linked torture to the pervasiveness of
arbitrary detention, as police and prosecutors attempted to justify an
arrest, many times without a warrant, by securing a confession to a crime
(see section 1.d.). Additionally, investigators often attempted to solve
crimes by rounding up likely suspects and extracting confessions through
torture. Although the
president signed the Facultative Protocol of the UN Convention Against
Torture in March, the government did not generally implement preventive
measures against torture and complete transparency in reporting incidents. In
March the representative for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights stated that torture continued, and in June Amnesty International (AI)
reported that it had documented 46 cases of torture over the previous 18
months. In November the president of the National Commission for Human Rights
(CNDH) Jose Luis Soberanes stated that the CNDH had
received 12 torture complaints during the year. According to Soberanes, authorities have added more modern
psychological methods of torture to the traditional methods of beatings,
burning with cigarettes, near suffocation, and hitting with telephone books. On July 14, a judge
released Victor Garcia Uribe, one of four prisoners identified in June 2004
as a victim of torture. Two others had been released in 2004, and a fourth
person remained in prison awaiting results from a review of his Istanbul
Protocol filing. While authorities had not punished any police officers
accused of torture in these cases, investigations continued at year's end. Officials in the
state of Jalisco failed to act on recommendations from the CNDH concerning
reports that police tortured and mistreated protesters detained in May 2004
in Guadalajara. In May AI reported that several detainees were coerced, beaten,
or threatened into making confessions or giving the names of those suspected
of having carried out sporadic acts of violence that ensued when police
clashed with demonstrators at the closing of the Third Summit of Heads of
State and Government of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the European Union.
The government had not sanctioned any officials involved. On August 25,
Mexico City police released Nadia Zepeda from prison. At the time of her
conviction for drug offenses in 2003, Zepeda, then age 18, claimed police
raped and tortured her while she was in custody at the police station, and
human rights groups stated that her trial was deeply flawed. No sanctions
were imposed against those accused, but Zepeda was pursuing complaints
against them. On June 19, local
police in Ciudad Juarez arrested American citizen minor Bryan Torres on
homicide charges. Torres reported that police beat and threatened him in an
attempt to extract a confession to his involvement in the killing of two
local police officers. No sanctions were imposed on the officers involved.
Torres was appealing his conviction at year's end. On August 6, an
American citizen reported to the district attorney's office in Ciudad Juarez
that local police had detained and raped her in the back of a police van. The
victim and her family also complained that local police threatened them with
arrest when they tried to report the crime at the municipal police station.
Of the three officers involved in the incident, one officer was in custody, one
officer was released on bail, and an arrest warrant was outstanding for the
third officer. U.S.
Library of Congress - Country Study 1997 Library of Congress
Call Number F1208 .M5828 1997 www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=F1208+.M5828+&new=true&st= [accessed 31 July
2017] HUMAN RIGHTS
CONCERNS [Data as of June 1996] – Brutality and systematic abuses of human
rights by elements of the Mexican internal security forces are pervasive and
have largely gone unpunished. Practices cited by human rights groups include
the use of torture, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary
detention, and other cruelties perpetrated against private persons and
prisoners. According to several sources, the number and seriousness of such
offenses has declined somewhat in the early 1990s. The improvement has been
attributed to the greater determination of the national government to
prosecute offenders and to the work of national and local human rights agencies
in exposing instances of police violations of human rights and in pressing
for punishment. According to the
private human rights organization, Amnesty International, state judicial
police and other law enforcement agencies frequently use torture in the form
of beatings, near-asphyxiation, electric shock, burning with cigarettes, and
psychological torture. Most victims are criminal suspects, but others, such
as leaders of indigenous groups or civil rights activists engaged in
demonstrations or other peaceful activities, have been targeted as well.
According to the CNDH, complaints of torture declined from 446 in its first
year of operation to 141 cases in its fourth. New laws enacted in
1991 permit courts to accept confessions only when made before a judge or
court official in the presence of defense counsel. Similar rules were adopted
by several states. Formerly, confessions obtained under duress were admitted
as evidence in court. Some defendants have claimed that even with the change,
they still fear torture if they fail to confess. According to the
CNDH, illegal deprivation of liberty is the most common human rights
complaint among its human rights cases. Between 1990 and 1992, there were 826
allegations of arbitrary detentions. Torture complaints numbered 446 in the
commission's first year but fell to 290 during its second. Nearly 100
nongovernmental human rights monitoring groups also have formed, making it
increasingly difficult for law enforcement bodies to remain indifferent to
public opinion. Nevertheless, the United States Department of State, in its
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1995 ,
reported a continuing failure to try, convict, and sentence prison and police
officials guilty of abuse. All
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