Mexico Accused of Torture in Drug Wars

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CBS/Washington Post

PUERTO LAS OLLAS, Mexico, July 9, 2009
Mexico Accused of Torture in Drug Wars
Washington Post: Residents and Human Rights Groups Allege Harsh Measures Used by Mexican Army in Battling Drug Cartels

Washington Post) This story was written by Steve Fainaru and William Booth.
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The Mexican army has carried out forced disappearances, acts of torture and illegal raids in pursuit of drug traffickers, according to documents and interviews with victims, their families, political leaders and human rights monitors.

From the violent border cities where drugs are brought into the United States to the remote highland regions where poppies and marijuana are harvested, residents and human rights groups describe an increasingly brutal war in which the government, led by the army, is using harsh measures to battle the cartels that continue to terrorize much of the country.

In Puerto Las Ollas, a mountain village of 50 people in the southern state of Guerrero, residents recounted how soldiers seeking information last month stuck needles under the fingernails of a disabled 37-year-old farmer, jabbed a knife into the back of his 13-year-old nephew, fired on a pastor, and stole food, milk, clothing and medication.

In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, two dozen policemen who were arrested on drug charges in March alleged that, to extract confessions, soldiers beat them, held plastic bags over their heads until some lost consciousness, strapped their feet to a ceiling while dunking their heads in water and applied electric shocks, according to court documents, letters and interviews with their relatives and defense lawyers.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/09/politics/washingtonpost/main5146883.shtml

[Chemisse]

1. Well, I'll state the obvious

The US certainly is in no position to chime in on this, and yet our silence may become deafening.

Maybe we have stopped the torture, but until it has been acknowledged, condemned and the offenders brought to justice, we will not have the moral authority with which to condemn other countries' human rights behaviors.

[Wizard777]

2. Let's hear it Obama. It's more important for Mexico to ignore this and move forward.

:banghead: Until that damned wall falls!

[Gman]

3. Interviews with relatives and defense lawyers???

If they're relatives and even defense lawyers they are also involved in some serious drug rings. You can't believe or trust a single solitary word of the relatives or the lawyers. But even if you could trust them, I think anything they do with these drug cartel suspects is perfectly fine. I guarantee you, the victims of the drug cartels got no better from these people than what the suspects are getting now. This is an entirely different game down there. Bottom line, you cannot believe one word from these relatives and lawyers.

These are the same drug cartel members that paid several thousand people from Matamoros (across from Brownsville) to Reynosa (across from McAllen) $35 each to demonstrate in the streets against Mexican federal troops being deployed in these cities to try to get the drug violence under control.

[Flaneur]

5. Wow, so you're defending torture?

"I think anything they do with these drug cartel suspects is perfectly fine."

Would you be comfortable adopting these methods here? Did you support the torture done terror suspects here?

[Gman]

9. Torture their asses!

[Flaneur]

4. This is just one of the problems with using the military for police matters.

The Mexican military does not have a good human rights record, and Mexicans have been screaming about this since Calderon sent in the army against the so-called cartels in December 2006.

I've spoken with a nice old lady in Culiacan, Mercedes Murillo, who has filed a human rights abuses law suit against the military in the Interamerican court (that's the wrong name). Somebody shot and killed her husband, a critic of the military. She thinks the shooters were from the military. I don't doubt it.

Not that Mexican cops haven't been known to torture people...

[SpiralHawk]

6. "But, but US Commander AWOL (R) did it first. Smirk" - Mexican Army

"If Republicon Homelander Chickenhawks can torture, it must be an OK Family Value. Smirk."

- The Mexican Army

[Solly Mack]

7. :(

K&R

It's a deep hole

[DCKit]

8. A logical extension of "Teh War on Teh Peoples"

They're torturing, maiming, killing and disappearing poor farmers, but when's the last time you read a headline about them capturing a drug lord, arresting a money laundering banker or putting any government, police or military official on trial for corruption in aiding and abetting the drug cartels?