http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22426378.htm

Mexico rights watchdog says police torture persists
22 Nov 2005 21:58:38 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Mexican police and prosecutors still use torture and their tactics have grown more sophisticated, despite President Vicente Fox's pledges to end such abuse, the national rights watchdog said on Tuesday.

Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the national human rights commission, said torture increasingly comes in the form of psychological rather than physical abuse.

"Unfortunately, torture is not a thing of the past," Soberanes told reporters, urging the government to become more zealous in combating it. "Torture has been modernized."

Threats, simulated executions, forcing the victim to hurt others or to watch others being tortured are among the psychological tactics, along with the traditional methods of beating, burning with cigarettes and near suffocation, according to the rights group.

The United Nations and other international organizations have repeatedly said Mexico's justice system is rife with torture and called on the Fox government to overhaul it.

Fox's proposals to open courts to more scrutiny, depoliticize prosecutors and professionalize police have stalled in the opposition-controlled Congress.

Soberanes said his office had received 12 torture complaints this year, which do not include those filed at state level, all against the attorney general's office.

In the past 15 years, state and national rights commissions have received more than 7,000 torture complaints against public officials. Comparable yearly figures were unavailable.

Among recent cases, Soberanes' commission found that 19 protesters at a summit of European and Latin American leaders last year were tortured by police in the western city of Guadalajara. State officials rejected the commission's call to investigate.

Earlier this year, a former aide to Fox said he was tortured while briefly jailed on charges he leaked information about the president's travel plans to a drug cartel. Nahum Acosta was later released for lack of evidence.

As national and international organizations have raised awareness of torture and called for stricter measures against it, corrupt officials have turned to more sophisticated tactics that are often harder to detect or prove, Soberanes said.

This week in Spain, Amnesty International said Fox had showed "good faith" in opening Mexico to observation by international rights groups and the U.N., but that problems such as torture remain.