Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels
on the border line between the US and Mexico
.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Torture : American “nearly beaten to death”: and other recent torture stories

Posted by DD partially republished from Las Vegas Sun, Amnesty International, and some material fromNew York Times


Marco Ugarte / AP In this June 30, 2016 photo, American craftsman Ronald James Wooden pauses during an interview in Mexico City. Originally from Iowa, he’s says police detained and beat him three years ago over a dispute with his neighbor.
MEXICO CITY — Ronald James Wooden flexes the large blacksmith's hands with which he once forged everything from large chandeliers to intricate jewelry. He's says he is still regaining feeling in them three years after a four-hour beating with fists and rifle butts by municipal police in southern Mexico.

The officers tightened his handcuffs and then stood on them to inflict maximum damage to his hands, said Wooden, 46, who had set up a workshop in the hills outside the silver-mining city of Taxco along with his Mexican-born wife. Police detained him for allegedly disturbing the peace, but Wooden says the beating arose from a dispute with his neighbor, a former cop who claimed to belong to a local drug cartel.

"They beat me for close to four hours. Some would get tired and then others would come in. They were going to kill me and disappear me," said Wooden, who said he suffered nerve damage, broken ribs and injuries to his genitals.


He said what saved him was "divine intervention and the love that my family has for me." His wife, Carmen, waited outside the police station for hours until she was allowed to pay Wooden's 200-peso ($12 fine) and took him to a hospital after he was released.

Human rights groups say police torture remains all too common in Mexico, but Wooden's case from 2013 is unusual in two respects: He's an American citizen and he's won a court order for a criminal investigation into the beating.

A probe in 2014 by the governmental Human Rights Defense Commission in Guerrero state found that Taxco police illegally detained Wooden, contradicted themselves about how he sustained his injuries and essentially lied about their extent. It found that the American had been covered in bruises, scrapes and cuts.

The commission issued a directive that municipal authorities should punish those responsible and pay reparation.

After two years of no action, a federal judge on June 30 ordered Mexico's government to open a formal criminal investigation for torture and kidnapping in Wooden's case.

"This opens a new road, little explored and little used" to force authorities to investigate the thousands of torture complaints in Mexico, said Mario Santiago, a lawyer for the human rights group Idheas, which is representing Wooden. "We know there are hundreds or thousands of torture complaints all the time in the country. There is no investigation; these go unpunished."

Wooden, who had been living in Texas, was drawn to Taxco by its famed silver jewelry industry, which had been revived by American adventurer William Spratling in the 1930s. But in recent years, the colonial-era town south of Mexico City has been in the grip of drug cartels. In 2010, authorities discovered 55 rotting bodies that had been tossed into an abandoned mine shaft near Taxco.

Wooden said that as soon as he set up his shop, he began receiving threats from a neighbor who claimed to be a member of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang and demanded a 10,000-peso monthly protection payment.

When the neighbor got out a machete and threatened to send Wooden back to the United States in pieces, both men called the police, Wooden said. He said that when officers showed up, they went straight for Wooden, kicking and punching him to the ground. They arrested him for being drunk and disturbing the peace — allegations he denies.

Wooden is under no illusions about what could have happened to him: Taxco's police were so notorious that the federal government disarmed the whole force a year and a half after Wooden's arrest and handed policing over to federal officers.

The city's former police chief, Eruviel Salado Chavez, was arrested last month on charges of organized crime and kidnapping. He is accused of close ties with Guerreros Unidos, which is blamed for many of the 100 bodies found in mass graves around Taxco and the nearby city of Iguala. The federal government says 43 college students who disappeared in 2014 in Iguala were kidnapped by corrupt municipal police and turned over to Guerreros Unidos, which supposedly killed them.

"Part of what has protected me is that I'm a foreigner, and I have no fear," Wooden said. "What happened to me has happened to other people ... Whole families have disappeared in those situations."

He said that when he came to his senses in the jail cell after the beating, "I realized that there is dried blood on the floor, and it's not mine so much."

Mexico passed a law setting out punishment for police abuse in 1986 amid horror over the discovery of tortured bodies at an earthquake-damaged police headquarters. The law, on paper, was toughened in 1991, banning the use of testimony obtained under torture.

Still, scandals involving Mexican police, soldiers and marines keep mounting. And Wooden's case is an example of how hard it is to punish such abuses.

The artisan initially filed a criminal complaint after the beating. But he said he dropped the effort when a man at the magistrate's office pulled him aside, saying: "They're planning to disappear you from here if you continue to make noise and press charges.'"

Besides suffering physical damage, Wooden said some of his equipment was stolen. He and his wife left Taxco, fearing for their lives, and moved to other parts of Mexico. He said he's been unable to get new projects due to his injuries and a lack of money to buy materials.

Nobody has gone to jail for torturing Wooden. Two of the police officers got warnings and were required to take human rights classes, though Santiago said it's unclear if they did.

"There is no investigation, these go unpunished. What happened to him happened to a lot of people," said Santiago. "What we are looking for is structural changes, so these abuses don't continue to happen."
                                                           ********************

Torture of women by police and military

The following material is taken from a story from Amnesty International written by  Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International,  @ErikaGuevaraR,

This report analyses the stories of 100 women who have reported torture and other forms of violence during arrest and interrogation by police and armed forces. Severe beatings; threats of rape against women and their families; near-asphyxiation, electric shocks to the genitals; groping of breasts and pinching of nipples; rape with objects, fingers, firearms and the penis – these are just some of the forms of violence inflicted on women, in many cases with the intention of getting them to “confess” to serious crimes.

 Verónica Razo, a Mexican 37-year-old mother of three is terrified of sleeping. Every night, when she lies in her bed in a small cell in Morelo's’ federal prison, an hour outside the capital, Mexico City, her mind replays the scariest 24 hours of her life.

 On 8 June 2011 federal police raped, suffocated and electrocuted her in a warehouse in Mexico City. She was tortured so badly that she almost died as a result. Police wanted her to say that she belonged to one of the brutal criminal gangs causing mayhem across the country. 

She has been behind bars since then.

Verónica’s story should be an exception; a terrible aberration; the result of a few “bad apples” within Mexico´s security forces.

Tragically, it is not.

A groundbreaking report published by Amnesty International details the harrowing testimonies of 100 women who have been arrested by Mexico´s police or military, the majority during the current President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in December 2012.

Of these 100 women; 97 said they were physically abused, 72 said they had been sexually abused, and 33 said they had been raped. As happened to Veronica, many of them were tortured to force them to “confess” to being part of a drug cartel or kidnapping ring.

We visited the only federal prison for women in Mexico to conduct interviews for this report; and the appalling stories of abuse just kept coming.

A housewife who was kidnapped from the street as she was on her way to buy groceries by unknown men, later identified as members of the security forces; a mother arrested as she walked to pick up her children from school; and a young woman who witnessed her husband being tortured to death by police officers, are among the stories of terror documented by Amnesty International.

 According to a recent investigation by Amnesty International, criminal complaints of torture at a federal level doubled between 2013 and 2014. Since 2014 the authorities have not been able to provide updated figures.

 Yet impunity for human rights violations is almost absolute; despite thousands of complaints of torture and other ill-treatment filed each year, the perpetrators go unpunished.

Mexico´s Federal Attorney General could not point to even one charge laid against torturers in either 2014 or 2015. And when we asked how many soldiers had been suspended for sexual abuse or rape since 2010, the army could not name one.

Severe beatings; threats of rape against women and their families; asphyxiation; electric shocks to the genitals; groping of breasts and pinching of nipples; rape, including with objects, fingers and firearms – these are just some of the forms of violence meted out to women and documented by Amnesty International.

A number of the women we spoke to had been raped by individuals belonging to the Navy. Mexico´s marines participate in public security operations and are generally seen as an elite force. However our research found that arrests carried out by the Navy had the highest rates of rape. In 2011, it was marines who subjected Denise Blanco and Korina Utrera to a 30-hour ordeal involving rape and ritual humiliation as a punishment for being lesbians. The couple remain in prison on charges of organized crime and drug offences.

 While this is discouraging, Amnesty International believes the situation can, and must, change. We also believe that the best way to stem the tide of abuse is to make sure there are consequences for those who perpetrate it.
    
                                         **************************
 Murdered Normalista's face not skinned but was tortured.
Cesar Mondragon with wife and baby
 The following is from a story in New York Times about  Julio César Mondragón, the classmate of the 43 missing college students who "disappeared" in 2014, whose body was found the day after the other students disappeared.

Though that is old news, some significant new develops have been disclosed that are worthy of reporting.  

The media reported at the time that his face had been skinned while he was still alive which would have been torture..  The govt. said he was not skinned and that animals had torn the skin off after the body was dumped.  If that were the case the government said there was no evidence of torture and his case was treated and classified as murder.  That meant that the case was handled at the state and local level since murder is not a federal crime.

This week the National Human Rights Commission issued a report that said the face had in fact not been skinned, but a second autopsy showed that Mondragon suffered had suffered 64 fractures in 40 bones, mostly in his skull, face and spine, according to José Trinidad Larrieta, who has led the commission’s investigation in the case. He said that the young man died of brain injuries.

 Mr. Larrieta called for federal prosecutors to investigate all suspects in the case for torture. torture is a federal charge, so the commission expressed confidence that federal prosecutors would take it up.
 
Twenty-eight people have been accused of murder in the Mondragón case, including the former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca. Mr. Larrieta said he believed there were 11 individuals, of whom five are in custody, who were directly involved in Mr. Mondragón’s torture and death. One of them was an official with the local Civil Protection Agency.

Nearly two years later, no one has been tried.

Mr. Mondragón was one of six people killed in the city of Iguala when the police attacked students from the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, a teachers college in Ayotzinapa, on Sept. 26, 2014.

Mr. Mondragón had been aboard one of several buses the students commandeered that were later attacked by the police. He appeared at an impromptu news conference held by the students after the initial attack. He fled when the police opened fire.

Soldiers found his body on a dirt road the next day.

Only time will tell if the Federal Prosecutors will do any better job prosecuting a torture case than the state prosecutors have done in prosecuting a murder case.

41 comments:

  1. It is not the first. God Bless Tony Schwitzer (Byrd Baylor's son)who was beaten to death by the police many years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who's Byrd Baylor? A gifted and famous author of children's books who has championed the needs of the Mexican-Americans living in the U.S. She is currently in her 90's a living near the border in southern Arizona. A wonderful woman and gifted writer who has suffered the anguish of losing her son to the tyranny of the United Mexican States. After all of this, she remains hopeful that the goodness of the Mexican culture, that we all know, will prevail.

      Delete
  2. That's the only way a human rights violation will get investigated. If the Mexican cops torture or kill a U.S white American citizen. There has been a lot of Mexican Americans disappeared in Mex but the only ones that get justice are white Americans. Just an observation...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only because there's pressure from outside Mexico otherwise no they don't have money to investigate.Country would be broke if they did and I'm sorry but outside people won't put up with it but of course they have the option to leave the country.

      Delete
    2. The American Embassy here in Mexico, said nothing, has done nothing, and continues to ignore what happened to Ronald James Wooden...i.e.Me...so NO it has nothing to do with "pressure from the outside"..

      Delete
    3. They cannot interfere in Mexican law,the Embassies.The outside pressure is not from there it's whoever this guy contacted.

      Delete
  3. Great Hell Hole is what Mexico is. Corruption starts at the President and filters all the way to the bottom. Until the people revolt, nothing will change.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My worst fear as an Mexican-American who frequently visits Mexico for long period of time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Si. Haci son toda la gente ennloder en Mexico. Pinche ignorantes estupidos sin educacion y les sale lo desesperado animales que son. Tal ves por eso la inquicicion en aquellos anios de los conquistadores les quedo bien. Por tratarse como la bola de bestia que son, los Espanoles los trataron igual. Y aunque otros paises como E.U. tambien tratan a gente mal, no lo hacen con tanta frequencia como en Mexico y menos contra su pinche gente de no ser absolutamente necesario (y estoy hablando de la violencia que sucren tambien las mujeres en prision). Haci es que guste a quien le guste a mi me gustaria vet otra pinche inquicicion contra tanto pinche ignorante pero de las mismas autoridares primero y gobierno primero.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Que pendejo.. Cuando Los espanoles llegaron con Los Aztecas estavan sorprendidos. No Eran Nada de vestias, las vestias fueron Los espanoles que mataron a 80% de indigenas mexicanos para robarle el oro. Los aztecas y mayasEran mas que lo que tu saves por que Li's espanoles quemaron y destruyeron mas de 80% de la historian pre espanola. Si no saves cayate el osico pendejo!

      Delete
    2. Your post would be more effective if it didn't contain so many grammatical and typographical errors. Makes me think you're a troll.

      Delete
    3. A pero como les duele escuchar que los reganen a los Mexicanos! Prefieren que por pendejadas les aplaudan mejor. En primer lugar los pinches Espanoles con sus enfermedades extranjeras mataron a mas gente que con la inquisicion. Yo estudie historia en tambien. Los nativos murieron mas por eso que por la espada. Pinche historia si conosco. El pendejo eres tu.
      I ain't no fuckin troll either. Fuck grammar shit. As long as I get my point across.

      Delete
    4. From 8;38 Lo que los libros Mexicanos de historia no dicen es que murieron mas nativos de enfermedades extranjeras que traian los Espanoles que por la espada de ellos. Esos 80% por ciento de la poblacion que dices que murio de ellos fue por eso no por la espada. Preguntale a un profesor de adeberas si no me crees y no a tu profe de la secu. A si que si se lo que digo guey.
      I ain't no fuckin troll either. I did not study grammar in Mexico and very little grammar in the U.S.

      Delete
    5. Mexicans acting like animals not all just this negative shit we read on here. Tienen hambre como los mayates en EU can't be civilized this scum gives good people a bad name. Pinches animales! Soy purepecha y espanol para el que quera alegar de historia

      Delete
  6. Excellent post DD , thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Terrible thing to be abused by these criminals like this . That being said . It is very foolish to move to a place like that . Of coarse if they took over here I could die . My neighbor wouldn't last long blackmailing me . Someone might show up later to get me after he is done with but the initial threat and my 2nd amendment right would shorten his life automatically . There is cartel here and I suspect there may be immigrants under their thumbs (not RIGHT here) but it is very hidden .
    I hear theres gold in the mountains of Afghanistan but its a fool that goes to find it .

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nuestro Senor tendra su dia

    ReplyDelete
  9. Who cares a white American got tortured. Shit like this happens south of the border everyday. Next..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That revalution is right around the corner huh?

      Delete
    2. I'm sensing hostility.

      I'll take a guess. You're a Mexican who lives in a WHITE country for a better life. Talk about ungrateful...

      Delete
  10. To be honest I'm not surprise!!!! Mexico is a wild land of drugs money and bullets...why would he fuck with an ex cop?? In Mexico cops and narcos are the same..he got lucky....vacations in Mexico anyone???

    ReplyDelete
  11. He should know better than to go live in Mexico. What did he expect for the town to welcome him with open arms .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 2:14 "the town" did not torture this american citizen, it was the government's sicarios, and the judge or prostiturer recommended he drop the case or he would get disappeared too.
      --The US consul, and the US embassy can not get involved in defending this american criminal because the mexican government is not pursuing any case against him, see how easy the US
      de-fangs itself?

      Delete
  12. Great read...but like most posts already on here are correct...first..why move to Mexico if your white..second...cops and narco are the same, he's lucky to be alive!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah he is lucky to be alive thanks to neighbourly ways!

      Delete
  13. Mexico needs more people like this student speaking his mind to the Mayor of Mexico City:

    https://www.facebook.com/648997031852298/videos/1087925237959473/

    ReplyDelete
  14. Dang the normalistas wife looks like she's 13.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Julio Cesar Mondragon was US citizen too...

      Delete
  15. I can't even go to Puerto Penasco any more. I'm afraid. Oh right on. Curtis A. Olson. Glendale, AZ.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why not?Try San Felipe.

      Delete
    2. 5:46 yes you can go, if you insist, go...

      Delete
  16. Off topic. Thursday evening another 2 females and 3 minors killed in their home by ar15 in ciudad victoria. But...600 military just arrived.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Mexico has become a war zone not quite as bad as Syria its Narco-terrorism what the cartels are doing now a days its verry sad to read all these articals posted on here as long as the cash$$$$ is flowing things will never change but continue to get worse as time flys by

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 2:03 mexico does not have "rebels" or ISIS terroristas supported by the US facking around.
      --Mexico has a narco-democracia governing that has turned narco-terrorista and uses american government "help" to terrorize the mexican population, helped by their own private hordes of sicarios...

      Delete
  18. Police do what the cartel tells them to do for fear of death mexico will only become more corrupt that has been proven already $$$ is king in mexico qnd with it u do as you are told even torture innocents that have absolutely nothing to do with the drug world

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...and as long as the mexican government keeps under-reporting, and minimizing the reports, criminality in mexico will be kept safely below the "10%" reduction the US demands before releasing the "MIERDA ACCORDS" billions of dollars to the mexican government that uses it to steal it and give the US gato por liebre, they just keep helping themselves to the money and to the drug trafficking...it is all the government's fault...

      Delete
  19. When the Mexican government realizes a significant curtailment of dollars and euros being spent in Mexico and tourists avkoido the country in droves, that is when we will begin to see superficial improvements. The government will parade new tourist cops in front of the news media and profess that all is well.
    However, in order to make longstanding changes, Americans, Canadians and Europeans will need to stop vacationing in Mexico for many years to force real change. Russians, Chinese, and Brazilians, which account for the lions share in the recent increase of tourism generated revenues will also have to decrease vacationing in Mexico. By 2018, tourism will become the third largest source of revenue for Mexico behind oil production and manufacturing. Mexico's government is counting on the projected increase in tourism spending as part of their overall economic stimulus plan. What this really means is the plan for politicians to steal more tax revenues, slimy bastards.
    Only when the federal government truly feels the diminished revenues will true changes be enacted because the people will begin demonstrating and drawing attention to their plight.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Something to be said for your comment 3:11AM......however, most tourists visiting are highly unaware of how bad things really are. Especially when they buy pkgs at all inclusives, giant money laundering operations. Only those of us who are interested and or have vested interests in Mexico and interact in Mexican communities are aware beyond the " headlines " few of which make US news. Sad but true.

    Anyway, no one deserves this kind of treatment anywhere except for the perps. Screw them .

    ReplyDelete
  21. Ronald James Wooden needs to get out of mexico and write his tell all book, then he can buy his equipment again and go back to mexico, but with money in his pocket he can get his accuser and torturers tortured for weeks and to the death, and make them dance like perros for a while...
    Seeking justice in mexico, court after court or juzgado by juzgado, will never do anything for his ass, forget about the US ambassador, he can't five up crime victims while he is on all fours...

    ReplyDelete
  22. Sorry dude, language was awful ...and nothing of what I truly
    believe. Except them fine Mexican chicas , of course!

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, refer to policy for more information.
Envía fotos, vídeos, notas, enlaces o información
Todo 100% Anónimo;

borderlandbeat@gmail.com