Thread: Mexican soldiers accused of rape, torture in report

Chronicle

Sept. 21, 2007, 4:15PM
Mexican soldiers accused of rape, torture in report

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

MEXICO CITY — A government-run human rights commission accused soldiers of rape and torture today and recommended the army be pulled out of Mexico's nationwide drug war.

The report by the National Human Rights Commission is the first official document to back up long-standing allegations of human rights abuses by soldiers that are under orders by President Felipe Calderon to retake large swaths of territory controlled by powerful drug cartels.

Military officials declined to comment on the report, saying any response to the allegations would come in writing.

Calderon ordered the nationwide crackdown shortly after taking office on Dec. 1, and has said the war against drug trafficking is his top priority. Calderon's office said they were reviewing the report.

Jose Luis Soberanes, the commission's president, said his staff was able to document four cases of abuse.

The first case was from 2006, before Calderon took office. The commission said soldiers allegedly raped 14 women and tortured and beat seven police officers in a small town in the state of Coahuila, apparently in retaliation for the brief kidnapping of a soldier by local officials. One woman, five months pregnant at the time, was so brutally attacked that she miscarried her baby, the report said.

Soberanes said a general was involved in the attacks, but he did not give details.

The second case cited took place in May, when soldiers responding to an ambush in the western state of Michoacan allegedly entered homes without warrants, stole money and property, tied residents up and threatened them with death if they did not provide information. The soldiers submerged at least one person in a well, sexually abused two children and raped two teenage girls, the report said.

In the third case, also in May, Soberanes said soldiers in Michoacan rounded up and tortured at least seven adults and one child in a small town that was recently the site of a shootout with suspected drug traffickers. Many of the victims reported having bags placed over their heads while they were beaten.

The fourth case already has been widely reported. On the night of June 1, on a deserted highway in the western state of Sinaloa, soldiers opened fire on a pickup truck packed with people, killing two women and three children.

Soldiers said the truck failed to slow for a highway checkpoint, but the commission said investigators found no evidence of a checkpoint. Soberanes said, the soldiers appeared to be simply camping alongside a dark road when they opened fire on the vehicle.

The investigation was based largely on testimony and evidence from witnesses and victims because the army was mostly uncooperative, commission official Susana Pedroza said.

Soberanes recommended that Calderon "return the soldiers to their barracks and stop sending them on missions they aren't prepared for." He also called on the federal government to punish those responsible.

Mexico's army has long had the responsibility of fighting the nation's drug traffickers because soldiers are seen as less corrupt than the nation's police force.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chr ... 54938.html

Nice country to open the boarders up with?

YA NICE COUNTRY. I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO MERGE WITH MEXICO AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL OF THEIR CULTURAL NUANCES.

What a nice little third world socialist hellhole....

Open border Democrats and Republicans....wouldn't it be nice, if we could just be one big country..

Maybe we could give 20 million invaders of our country, amnesty, so they can bring their great culture, great criminal activity, great drug cartels, great nationwide corruption, and great uneducated spanish speaking citizens, to our neighborhoods and communities.

Then when we're a third world socialist hellhole .....we can be proud of our diversity.