Mexico rights panel slams army for drug war abuse

11 Jul 2008 22:29:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Mica Rosenberg

MEXICO CITY, July 11 (Reuters) - Mexican soldiers have killed seven people, conducted illegal detentions and used electric shock to torture suspects in their crackdown on drug gangs, the country's human rights ombudsman said on Friday.

The national rights commission presented eight formal complaints against the army of serious human rights abuses since December 2006 when President Felipe Calderon sent out thousands of troops to battle drug cartels.

The army said it would investigate the cases, which include the suspected killing of a minor.

Calderon's use of the army in fighting drug cartels has been questioned by rights groups, but political analysts say troops are his only real option in a country where as many as half the police could be in the pay of drug gangs.

The report comes weeks after Washington pledged $400 million to help fund Calderon's drug war, despite a long battle in Congress as many lawmakers concerned about army abuses sought to attach human rights conditions to the aid.

Some 1,700 people have been killed in Mexico this year in attacks between rival cartels and the 25,000 soldiers and federal police deployed to control them, piling pressure on Calderon's pledge to bring drug violence under control.

The vast majority of the victims are cartel members who kill each other or police, but rights groups say poor training and command has led to army abuse and civilian deaths.

In one case, the bludgeoned body of a man was found dumped in the desert near the U.S. border a day after he was captured by the army, the report says.

In another, soldiers in the central state of Michoacan killed a teenager when they shot at a car that was driving around a town they had cordoned off.

ELECTRIC SHOCKS

Several victims told the commission they were wrongly accused of being drug smugglers by the army and tortured.

The report says soldiers burst into the house of a man in Michoacan thinking he was a drug kingpin, covered his head, punched, kicked and beat him with the butt of their rifles and applied electric shocks to his testicles.

The soldiers then allegedly took him to a military base where he overheard them saying, "We really messed this one up," before eventually letting him go, according to the report.

"These are incidents that could have been avoided with better information, better training ... and improved supervision by commanders," said rights ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, as he presented the report.

International group Human Rights Watch has criticized Mexico's rights commission, an independent government body, for failing to follow up on past recommendations.

"It is important that (it) continues to document that the military commits egregious abuses while engaged in law enforcement and counternarcotics operations, but it is a bad idea to ask the military to investigate itself," said Tamara Taraciuk, a Mexico expert at Human Rights Watch. (Additional reporting by Michael O'Boyle; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Eric Walsh)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11430570.htm