Juarez Police Accused of Negligence in Probe of Slain Women
By Susana Hayward
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MEXICO CITY - Investigators probing the murders and disappearances of hundreds of women in northern Mexico have been negligent and sloppy and are inexperienced, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said Monday in a lengthy report on a series of crimes that is drawing more international attention.
The commission's 11-volume report said that since 1993 in Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, Texas, at least 263 women have been brutally killed and 4,587 others have vanished.
"The negligence in the investigations is evidence of a constant contempt that can only be explained because the victims were mostly vulnerable: poor women, young and adolescents, workers, students," Commission President Jose Luis Soberanes told a committee of the Mexican Senate. "In short, they were people without any power or voice."
The report is likely to increase outrage over the cases, which have been the subject of growing complaints from human rights and women's organizations throughout the world. On Nov.1, thousands of people across the United States staged protests to demand a resolution to the deaths, which the Mexico City daily Reforma calls "the crime of the century." In April, Amnesty International issued a lengthy report on the murders and disappearances.
The cases are particularly sensitive because of allegations that many of the dead and missing were attracted to the border region to work in assembly plants that manufactured goods for export to the United States. Activists accuse local authorities, who in Mexico have responsibility for prosecuting murder and kidnapping, of being indifferent because the women were poor and from somewhere else.
The report echoes activists' concerns. "With so much evidence of negligence, we've asked ourselves many times: What would have happened if the murdered women were from a higher social status?" the report said.
Jose Jesus Silva Solis, the state attorney in Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located, has defended the handling of the cases, saying many have been resolved, including some that were blamed on domestic violence. Only one person has been convicted in the cases - an Egyptian living in the United States- though a dozen other people have been arrested.
Theories surrounding the cases abound, including allegations that they're the work of a serial killer or killers, drug gangs or organized crime.
The human rights commission didn't link the cases, however, though Soberanes said in his report that "drug-trafficking in Juarez cannot be ignored."
The report listed a host of problems associated with the investigations. It said police used torture and falsified evidence to get confessions or make arrests. It noted that some documents were burned by homeless people for heat. Local officials buried some victims without even trying to identify them.
The report added that in the cases of the 4,587 missing women, the state attorney general's office provided only 395 files. The commission was able to determine the cause of deaths of 236 of 263 women. State investigators say about 100 deaths were sexually motivated.
"Without a doubt this report is lacking due to loss of information, subsequent confusion, destruction and theft of files," it said.
"Mexico must answer one question to society. Who killed them? It's a very simple question and we have to be capable of answering it," Soberanes told senators.
The commission said 58 women were strangled; 55 were shot; 45 were stabbed; 28 died from cranial trauma; four from heart attacks; one from asphyxia; one from a beheading, one from carbon monoxide poisoning and three others from trauma, contusion and cervical trauma, respectively.
The human rights commission acted on its own in beginning its investigation. A team of 20 investigators spent 11 months working on the report.
Among its recommendations were the establishment of a national registry of missing people, greater funding for DNA and other scientific tests and greater funding for local law enforcement.
What impact the report will have is unclear. The commission has been influential in persuading authorities to open investigations into the kidnappings, torture and deaths of 532 people during this country's crackdown against leftists in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mexican President Vicente Fox had already moved to respond to public complaints about the Juarez cases. In October, he named human rights lawyer Maria Guadalupe Morfin to head a commission to coordinate efforts of the federal, state and local agencies investigating the slayings.
"We don't want another death in Ciudad Juarez," Fox said. "We are using all our resources and doing everything we can to punish guilty."
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