In a Brutal Year in Venezuela, Even Crime Fighters Are Killers

[Bacchus4.0]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/world/americas/venezuela-violence.html?_r=0

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He was stripped naked, kicked and struck with the butt of a rifle, he said. Soldiers hung him by his arms from the ceiling with a cord, demanding to know whether he belonged to one of the gangs that had terrorized his neighborhood in Venezuela’s rural area of Barlovento with robberies and kidnappings.

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He would soon realize that he was among the lucky ones. Weeks later, the bodies of 13 others arrested in similar raids were found, most at the bottom of a mass grave. Many had been tortured, according to the authorities.

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The killings at Barlovento, which government investigators have condemned as a massacre of innocents, have pointed to a troubling culprit in the country’s rising violence: its own security forces.

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Killings have risen to 28,479 this year, the highest number ever recorded in the country, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, an independent group that tracks violence.