Thread: Hit man or Mexican torture victim?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/7240234.html

Hit man or Mexican torture victim?
Suspect claims his confessions to 17 slayings false
By LISE OLSEN
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Oct. 10, 2010, 8:47AM

If all accusations are to be believed, Juan Alfredo Soto Arias is a ruthless hit man responsible for the heinous slaughter of 15 young people at a birthday party, the killing of a U.S. Air Force sergeant and the assassination of a Mexican reporter targeted for his organized crime coverage.

All of his confessions have been ballyhooed by Mexican authorities as breakthroughs in major cases.

But a human rights complaint asserts something else: that Soto Arias, described as a 29-year-old junkyard owner, was repeatedly tortured and forced to confess to all those crimes by the military.

Dubbed "El 7" and imprisoned in Ciudad Juarez, the suspect so far has been convicted of nothing. His torture complaint remains under investigation by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. State and federal prosecutors did not respond to questions the Houston Chronicle submitted about his case.
Not an isolated case

But many other crime suspects and ordinary citizens have made similar allegations about forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and torture at the hands of the Mexican military.

More than 4,000 such human rights complaints have been filed since 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and deployed the military in counter-drug operations, according to a report released last week by the Washington Office on Latin America and the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center.

Most complaints come from Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua state, also home to Mexico's most far-reaching reforms in criminal investigations and judicial procedures.

Torture claims from high-profile suspects like Soto Arias, though, have shaken hopes that justice — or even reliable answers — can be obtained even in some of Mexico's most heinous murder cases.

Few cases drew as much outrage as when gunmen in January stormed a house filled with 60 high school students celebrating a birthday and a soccer victory in the working-class Juarez neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar. They killed 15 people, 11 of them teenagers, and left other wounded survivors buried beneath the bodies.

In the following weeks, Mexican military rounded up suspects. Two groups were presented at news conferences as the birthday party killers.

Soldiers arrested him on March 16 as he drove through town with his 6-year-old child, according to a copy of his human rights complaint.

About 24 hours later, Soto Arias was presented as "El 7" — a hit man and part of a gang whose members confessed their involvement in the birthday party massacre. At least nine others were paraded before cameras in February and March, including a man who sold records in the city center.

Soto and other birthday party suspects later claimed they'd been forced to confess. The record seller said soldiers administered electric shocks to his chest and abdomen, placed a plastic bag over his head, and "told him that his wife was in the adjoining room and that they were going to rape her … ," according to a summary of his complaint included in the human rights report last week.

Chihuahua state officials then announced Soto Arias also was tied to the unsolved mass slayings of a U.S. Air Force sergeant and five others at the Amadeus Bar in November 2009. Staff Sgt. David Booher, stationed in New Mexico, had defied military warnings and crossed the border to visit his mother. Hit men turned their guns on him only after he tried to help a dying man at the bar, authorities said.

Six months later Soto Arias was named as a suspect in a yet another high-profile case.

In September, the federal attorney general revealed an unexpected breakthrough in the 2008 death of Juarez crime beat reporter Armando Rodriguez. The key suspect: Soto Arias.

That announcement came in Mexico City during the visit of international journalists' groups who'd come to ask President Calderon to boost Mexico's lackluster response to dozens of violent attacks against journalists, including the Rodriguez case. Representatives from the Inter American Press Association and the Committee to Protect Journalists initially expressed hope for the unexpected development.

But details soon emerged about Soto Arias' torture allegations.

The copy of his human rights complaint says that after soldiers detained him he was beaten, stripped naked and sexually assaulted with a tool before confessing to participating in the birthday party killings in January and the slayings of the Air Force sergeant and others.
Newspaper staff dubious

Soto Arias sat in a Juarez prison until June, when he was abruptly removed by soldiers and again beaten until he also confessed to participating in the November 2008 killing of Rodriguez, a reporter at the newspaper El Diario, the complaint says.

In an editorial and subsequent news story, Rodriguez's colleagues at El Diario openly challenged the government's efforts to link Soto Arias to the 2008 death.

They called instead for untainted justice.
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I don't think we can concretely believe anything that Mexican law enforcement says about anything. They have a consistent history of arresting just anyone and pinning something on them whether they are guilty or not. For instance...the Falcon Lake incident. Didn't they insist for the first few days that the murdered man's wife was lying? And then as it usually happens, after being bombarded with people demanding that they investigate the incident, VIOLA.....all of the sudden there are two suspects.
Have they actually stated that they were wrong about the wife? I'm sure not.

For instance...the Falcon Lake incident. Didn't they insist for the first few days that the murdered man's wife was lying?

YEA thats what they said
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And then as it usually happens, after being bombarded with people demanding that they investigate the incident, VIOLA.....all of the sudden there are two suspects.

Now there are reports saying there are no suspects
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Have they actually stated that they were wrong about the wife? I'm sure not.

NOPE and they never admit when they are wrong

Originally Posted by jamesw62

For instance...the Falcon Lake incident. Didn't they insist for the first few days that the murdered man's wife was lying?

YEA thats what they said
----------------------------------------------

And then as it usually happens, after being bombarded with people demanding that they investigate the incident, VIOLA.....all of the sudden there are two suspects.

Now there are reports saying there are no suspects
===================================
Have they actually stated that they were wrong about the wife? I'm sure not.

NOPE and they never admit when they are wrong

Yea...they tried to accuse the wife. And when that didn't work, they came up with two "suspects"...out of nowhere. They don't even have a body so how can they have suspects? I think they just picked two guys so it looks like they are doing something when they are not.

they dont have suspects. they were trying to say they do in order to lighten the pressure off their backs for all not believing Tiffany

Yes sir...sounds like the usual BS runaround from Mexican authorities.

They blamed the mass killings of women in Juarez on an Egyptian Chemist although, after he was put in prison there, the killings continued and still do.
The Chemist I think died in the prison last year.
I'm guessing we will probably never know the real story of what happened to David Hartley and I'll bet money, we will never see or find his body. If the body were to be "found" (not that it was ever lost), no one would produce it because then we would find out the truth based on what would be found on and or done to his body. I wouldn't be surprised if the real murderers were Mexican soldiers.

That's how mexico works they just keep passing the buck they can't handle the cartels and protect their own people inside their boarder because there system is so screwed up I've had run in with their police and $40. Later I was free to go on 2 seprate occiasions. How can you protect your people with law officers like that! All they care about is them selves and id be willing to bet it goes all the way to the top like that! They can't even understand what justice really is. It seems easier to talk trash to U.S. goverment than to the cartels