Allegations Of Torture By Police Underscored
by Adolfo Garza
Mexico City, Mexico
The scenario is familiar: A tragic crime. Pressure on authorities to make an arrest. A roundup of the usual suspects. A quick confession.
But what follows is equally predictable. In the last week, seven men have claimed Mexican police tortured them into confessing to high-profile murders they didn't commit.
The men are involved in three separate cases: the slaying last year of an American journalist and two killing sprees that claimed more than 100 victims each.
In the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, four bus drivers accused in a wave of slayings of women say they were beaten into confessing.
Two Huichol Indian men charged with killing journalist Philip True have said they were also beaten. So does a man charged with killing 137 people and kidnapping six across central Mexico.
The common thread
The common thread to all three cases is that authorities were under fierce pressure to find and punish the killers. "Torture is more likely when there is political pressure to solve a case," said Adriana Carmona of the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Center for Human Rights.
Observers say prosecutors and police - underpaid, underequipped and ill-trailed - are under pressure from Mexico's legal systems to work fast and seek quick confessions because the law requires that all evidence in a trial be presented within five days of an arrest.
Police trained at torture?
Suspects claim police are trained at torture and know how to avoid leaving evidence. Victor Moreno Rivera, a US citizen accused of raping and killing young women in Ciudad Juarez, said police wrapped him in blankets and poured water on him, nearly smothering him.
"I felt death was near....so I told them what they wanted," he said.
At a news conference last week in Ciudad Juarez, the first request reporters made was for Moreno Rivera and the other three suspects to raise their shirts. When they did, they revealed bruises, abraisions and circular marks the men claimed were caused by cattle prods.
The prosecutor for the case, Zully Ponce, denied the suspects had been tortured and gave local reporters a videotape of the interrogration to support their claim that the men confessed freely.
What rights groups say
Human-rights groups say police torture is common in Mexico. Three months ago, New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a report criticizing the widespread use of torture among some Mexican authorities.
"Certainly, Human Rights Watch has seen that torture as a method of investigation is far more common than authorities want to believe," said Joel Solomon, the rights group's research director for the Americas.
Spokesmen for the government's National Human Rights Commission and the attorney general's office declined to comment.
Copyright 1999 Seattle Times