Borderland Beat posted by dd Republished from Huffington Post
Report by Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher
Report by Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher
DD; Almost from the day the students went missing there had been doubts and questions about the government version of what happened in Iguala on Sept. 26 and 27 of last year. The then Attorney General Murillo Karam told the families of the missing "To move on" with their lives - that the govt. investigation established "the historical facts". He then uttered his famous phrase "ya me canse" as he left the meeting with the families.
But then on Dec 13 Proceso published a report written by Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher of the Journalism Program of Research from the University of California at Berkeley blew the governments case out of the water. Their report caused an international uproar. Their report was covered in summary by BB on Dec. 14, and a supplement giving more details of the report was published on Dec. 16.
Hernandez and Fisher have just issued a new report detailing the torture the 4 suspects whose "confessions" were the foundation of the government's "official" version of events. Their report includes the medical exams showing evidence of the torture.
But then on Dec 13 Proceso published a report written by Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher of the Journalism Program of Research from the University of California at Berkeley blew the governments case out of the water. Their report caused an international uproar. Their report was covered in summary by BB on Dec. 14, and a supplement giving more details of the report was published on Dec. 16.
Hernandez and Fisher have just issued a new report detailing the torture the 4 suspects whose "confessions" were the foundation of the government's "official" version of events. Their report includes the medical exams showing evidence of the torture.
Mexico Tortured The Alleged Killers Of 43 Missing Students: Report
By Roque Planas
: |
Four men named by Mexican authorities as drug cartel members who
allegedly killed 43 missing students are actually impoverished
construction workers who confessed only after being tortured, according
to a report published Sunday in Mexican magazine El Proceso.
The investigative report by
journalists Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher casts further doubt on the
Enrique Peña Nieto administration's already widely discredited
investigation into what happened to the missing students. On Sept. 6, a
panel of experts fielded by the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights announced that the Mexican government's version of events has no basis in forensic science.
On the night of Sept. 26, 2014, a group of students from the
Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College went to the nearby city of Iguala to
commandeer buses they planned to use to travel to a demonstration a few
days later in Mexico City commemorating the Tlatelolco student massacre
of 1968. Mexican security forces attacked the students multiple times,
killing three, injuring others and allegedly abducting the missing 43.
Then-Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam first claimed in November that
four members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang had confessed to killing
the missing students. Prosecutors said that local police had handed the
students over to the alleged gang members, who supposedly murdered them
and incinerated their bodies in a trash dump in the neighboring town of
Cocula.
That version of events rests largely
on the testimony of four men. The government has said they were members
of a powerful drug cartel.
But the Proceso report says that all
four -- Patricio Reyes Landa Salgado, Jonathan Osorio Cortez, Agustín
García Reyes and Felipe Rodríguez Salgado -- were just construction
workers. To force them to confess to the crime, the report says, Mexican
security forces beat them repeatedly, wrapped their heads in bags to
nearly suffocate them and administered electrical shocks to their
genitals. It says that security forces also threatened to subject their
wives and children to the same abuse if they refused to comply.
The Proceso story is based on depositions from the case obtained by
the reporters as well as interviews with the imprisoned suspects' family
members. Fisher and Hernández are fellows with the Investigative
Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hernández said these new findings make it hard to believe that the
four men masterminded the presumed murder of the students, whose
disappearance has set off international protest against the Peña Nieto
administration.
"To do what the Mexican government says they did, they needed
vehicles, they needed money," Hernández told The Huffington Post.
"Nothing that we saw in their homes showed that they did."
: |
The story that the Attorney
General's Office claims the four men told has been soundly rejected by
multiple outside experts. For months, independent forensic scientists
have argued that a fire capable of incinerating 43 bodies could not have
occurred at the Cocula trash dump. The detailed report by the IACHR
panel released this month confirmed those arguments.
The four men's testimonies also contradict one another and in some
instances contradict basic facts in the case, the reporters note. For
example, one of the four men, Jonathan Osorio Cortez, said they took the
students to the garbage dump, killed them and incinerated their corpses
between 10 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. that September night. The timing is
impossible, since the first of several attacks by police were only just
beginning at 10 p.m.
After being interrogated but before giving their depositions, the
four suspects underwent medical evaluations, according to the Proceso
report. Each of the men was covered with dozens of contusions and red
prick wounds that the reporters say indicate electric shocks.
The medical exam for Felipe Rodríguez Salgado (see below), dated
Jan. 17 -- less than two weeks before Murillo Karam announced that
investigators had established the "historical truth" behind
the Sept. 26 attacks -- found a long list of scabs, greenish bruising
and small scars associated in previous cases with electric shocks. The
signs of torture were visible all over his face, arms, chest, legs and
feet.
Number of Wounds Registered During Medical Exams
Patricio Reyes Landa Salgado: 72
Agustín García Reyes: 42
Jonathan Osorio Cortez: 94
Felipe Rodríguez Salgado: 60
At least one of them said he had been tortured.
DD: I am only including the first page of the medical exam and the last page with a body diagram of the injuries he sustained in the alleged torture. The full forensic report can be seen at Scribd.
"It is my wish to declare that the way they said they detained us
was a lie," Reyes Landa said in his deposition. "They came in my house
and they started to beat and kick me, they put me in the vehicle, they
blindfolded me and tied my feet and hand and started once again to beat
me and apply electric shocks. They put a rag over my nose and poured
water over me and applied electric shocks inside my mouth and on my
testicles. They put a bag over my head to keep me from breathing. I
spent several hours like this."
The Attorney General's Office did not answer a request for comment.
President Peña Nieto has directed the current attorney general, Arely
Gómez González, to comply with some of the recommendations of the IACHR
report.
All four suspects remain locked up in a maximum security prison in
Mexico state, despite the mounting evidence contradicting the
government's allegations against them. Authorities have not clarified
when the four men or more than 100 other people detained in the
investigation will face trial.
That's not unusual in Mexico, according to John Ackerman, a law
professor at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. Under
Mexican law, authorities have wide latitude to detain people based on
suspicion for months at a time and to keep them jailed as the trial
moves forward.
But Ackerman said the recent revelations by the journalists and the
IACHR panel make it clear that federal authorities have willfully misled
the public about what happened to the missing students.
"This is not just negligence, this is not inefficiency," Ackerman
told HuffPost. "There was a cover-up at a high level of government. I
think that Murillo Karam cannot play innocent in this exposé. … Murillo
Karam really should be forced to face justice. This is not excusable."
Two other high-profile cases have unraveled in recent years after
the Attorney General's Office severely botched those investigations,
Ackerman said. The 2009 mass arrest of state officials accused of ties
to drug traffickers known as the Michoacanazo
fell apart due to lack of evidence. And after years in prison, the
Mexican government freed three dozen people convicted in the 1997 Acteal massacre of 45 indigenous people in Chiapas state. Authorities gathered evidence in that case using torture, which is inadmissible in court under Mexican law.
"Based on past experience, the expectation is that these people will
be eventually freed," Ackerman told HuffPost, referring to the four
construction workers. "Of course that would be an admission of the
government of their total failure, so they're going to hold it back as
long as they can."
THESE ARE LIES!!
ReplyDeleteThis is what you get from reporters who report from afar and know nothing about Guerrero cartels.
this is bullshit. two of the guys who confessed were known sicarios, and feared by the people. el chereje gave the most testimony, (Agustin) he is a killer.
sure they tortured them and guided their testimony to fit the official version, BUT
they are not impoverished construction workers.
blew the lid off the case? for americans maybe. but not for 70% of Mexicans who until the theory of the fifth bus came along 9 months ago we never bought any story connected with the government.
Mataron a muchos indígenas para despojarlos de sus tierras. "No importa, solo eran unos indios patarrajadas" dijo el mexicano cobarde. Mataron a cientos de mujeres adolescentes después de violarlas. "No importa, solo eran unas pirujas" decía el mexicano cobarde. Mataron a inmigrantes, hombres y mujeres, porque no quisieron trabajar para los carteles y para robarles. A quien le importa? Solo son unos sudacas. Dijo el mexicano cobarde. Cuando mataron a los estudiantes en Guerrero, desollando a uno de ellos vivo, el mexicano cobarde y agachon dijo "que importa? Solo eran unos revoltosos. Cuando encarcelaron a los valientes que se levantaron en armas contra los delincuentes, el mexicano agachan u cobarde dijo, a quien le importa? De seguro trabajaban para el cartel rival. Cuando hombres armados llegaron a la casa del mexicano a levantarlo, los demás dijeron "a quien le importa, solo era un COBARDE"
ReplyDelete4:47 But then mexico will be open to nice decent people from the US and Europe for investment and tourism without lacras on the streets or the schools...
Delete--They need their sunny beaches to "tan" like boiled lobsters...
Me gusto tu relato. AC
DeleteAll these freackin sick Bastards need to be executed immediatley damn it!!! Freackin outrageous and embarrassing to still have this comversation because no one wants to admit the freackin truth damn it! There is sheer stupidty and no freackin common sense in mexico anymore damn it!! You got that jackass EPN and his other jackass friends and then the freackin jackass mayor and wife who are all a bunch of freackin DEMONS damn it!!!! We need to start handing out some freackin permission slips to pistol whip these s.o.b.s and hang them damn it!!!! Im gonna start handing freackin permission slips that authorize any of you to open up a can of whoop ass on any of these sick bastards from local police all the way to EPN damn it! Cant believe we are still playing games with these freackin morons and not breacking a foot in their asses damn it! We need to exafreackincute that fat bastard murrilo karam. Damn bastard probably ate the 43 students, thats why he's so tired and fat damn it!!
ReplyDeleteBro, feakin calm down off that shit your on. We get it ! Geez, you are freakin me out güey.
DeleteCurious .. how do you "know" what you know about these feared sicarios?
ReplyDelete5:43 curious, who the hell are you talking to? It gets hard to go back and read all the prior comments before your wise ass comment...see your time there? It is free, use it.
Deleteif you live in a plaza or have family in a plaza you know who works the plaza. the gu group that 8:21 talks about had been killing for more than 3 years. they are not innocents
DeleteOk, so these guys got tortured by their own police narco-comrades just to harden them up?
Deleteno they were tortured by the federals, a typical MO to get people to "confess" to their fairy tale. good guys, bad guys are tortured into confessions.
DeleteI think the family need justice and should revolt and string up the politicos at fault . As human being not effected by this atrocity I am angered to read this article , how can a trusted official lie to the poor families of these victims. There needs to be blood for blood .
ReplyDeletethe ages are not correct. these are not innocent people
ReplyDeleteJonathan osario is El Jona he is not 94 he is 30 .
filipe is not 60 and he is second tier on guerros chart el pato and jona and chereje work for him .
casarruias was lider, with raul salgado . raul is boss of finance
agustin is el chereje works for pato .
The numbers that are listed are talking about the amount of wounds registered during medical exams not their age.
DeleteNumber of Wounds Registered During Medical Exams
Patricio Reyes Landa Salgado: 72
Agustín García Reyes: 42
Jonathan Osorio Cortez: 94
Felipe Rodríguez Salgado: 60
that point is not the age the point is the lies that these guys were from group of 10 who ran the iguala plaza they are not workers. they are killers. always the americans make up stories. this is injustice for the normalistas.
Deletethis is truth as on the 26september. casarruias the lider raul under him. then pato with the other sicarios work for him.
DeleteThe mere threat of electric shock to the ass will make the main guys testify, they are the most cowardly of the cowards, with high powerful government positions...
ReplyDelete--At least a motherfacking lie detector, please! Decent and tender nice questioning and interrogations...
--carefully asking people like javier duarte de ochoa if he was behind the narvarte murders, or any of the other murders he is accused of ordering, does not work, they deny it all by the book.
--juan manuel guillermo contreras sepulveda, aka: juan manuel contreras sepulveda, aka: manuel contreras sepulveda, aka "momo" chief of Chilean DINA was only let go to the dogs by his boss augusto pinochet after the US washed their hands off them, after murdering of Orlando Lettelier and general Carlos Pratts contreras died denying it all even happened, in spite of having been sentenced to over 500 years in prison with judgement of 580 more years in prison, not even half of the charges were tried, the bodies of the victims were dissapeared, some that were found were killed in "combat" surviving victims asked for it, and they were all communistas, even their brothers-at-arms...
--40 years later, the chilean military still celebrate their "victory over communism", the truth gets hidden, and tortured victim then 20 years old Michelle Bachelett is president of chile...
--and the US navy, the CIA, the Chicago boys school of economics, and henry kissinger, have not paid for their sins...
--the mexican government is doing it all again, step by step, by the book, 40 years from now we will still be wondering what the hell happened with ayotzinapa and all the other crimes of state terrorism inspired by the US and co and their global aspirations, not just in mexico...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies for the long read, this is from AP. PEACE.... Published on Sep 16 2015
ReplyDeleteChristopher Sherman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
COCULA, MEXICO—The convoy of gunmen fanned out across the southern Mexico municipality of Cocula before dawn. Some carried names and blasted their way into homes. Others simply swept up whoever crossed their paths.
Seventeen people vanished from Cocula on this single day, July 1, 2013 — more than a year before the disappearance of 43 college students in the nearby city of Iguala would draw the world’s eyes to the mountains of northern Guerrero and to the issue of Mexico’s disappeared.
The disappearance of the students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa on Sept. 26, 2014, gave hundreds of other families who had loved ones vanish the courage to come forward, many for the first time, to report the crimes. These, they said, were the “other disappeared.”
Among them was Rosa Segura Giral, who waited more than a year to report the abduction of her 19-year-old daughter, Berenice Navarijo Segura. Berenice disappeared on that July day in Cocula, just hours before her high school graduation.
“What if I report it and my daughter is nearby and they know I reported it?” Rosa Segura Giral had wondered; could they “hurt her or something?”
It was not until other families began meeting at a church in Iguala last fall to search the surrounding mountains for their missing that Segura Giral finally filed a report with authorities.
More than 25,500 people disappeared in Mexico between 2007 and July 31, 2015, according to the government’s count. In recent months, The Associated Press interviewed the family members of 158 of those “other disappeared” who came to report their cases at the church, provide DNA samples and go into the surrounding mountains with machetes and steel rods to look for hidden graves. (Cont'd).
Pt 2, any were more than reluctant to be interviewed. Still fearful but also furious, they speak hesitantly of children, parents and siblings dragged away before their eyes, of those who left home for work or stepped out to buy milk and seemed to be swallowed by the earth.
ReplyDeleteMen or boys accounted for all but 15 of the 158 disappeared and ranged in age from 13 to 60, with the majority younger than 30.
The families have found 60 graves and, with the help of federal authorities, recovered the remains of 104 people. Six of those have been identified and returned to their families.
There are many possible reasons for the abductions: Recruitment to fill the drug cartels’ ranks with young men. Attacks on competitors. Profit from ransom money, or punishment for failure to make extortion payments. Regardless, the abductions sow fear.
Fear and the silence it induces allow the cartels to operate unhindered. Their infiltration of the police was so deep that after the disappearance of the 43 students, federal authorities arrested 66 members of the Iguala and Cocula police forces. The government investigation said the local police had illegally detained the students and then turned them over to the Guerreros Unidos gang to be killed.
Iguala is an important way station for the opium paste that is harvested high in the surrounding mountains as it begins its journey north to the United States. This geographic distinction makes it a valuable prize for the several competing drug cartels that operate in the region.
On the morning of Berenice’s graduation, her family heard the barrage of gunfire from 20 to 30 men shooting their way into the home of 23-year-old Luis Alberto Albarran Miranda and his 14-year-old brother, Jose Daniel. Cocula’s police never came out of the station 90 metres from the house, even as gunmen blasted the door open and shouted that they were federal police looking for weapons. They took the unarmed brothers away barefoot.
Less than a kilometre to the east of the Albarran Miranda home, over a small hill and across a short bridge, armed men also shot their way into the home of their cousin, 15-year-old Victor Albarran Varela. While some relatives hid in the basement, an older brother scrambled over the wall and across the stream. He was shot in the ankle, but escaped. Victor had the bad luck to be in the bathroom when his mother herded the others into hiding, and he came face to face with gunmen looking for another brother. When they couldn’t find him, they took Victor instead, “as insurance,” his mother, Maura Varela Damacio, said.
Berenice Navarijo Segura disappeared soon after. She waited 20 minutes after the shooting subsided before hopping onto the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle to go have her hair and makeup done downtown.
When her mother saw the convoy of pickup trucks rumble past her house on its way out of town hours later, she never imagined that Berenice and her boyfriend could be inside one of them.
“I never thought this could happen to me. Never, never, never in my life. I never thought that people wanted to harm you so much. Because it’s hurt that they cause you,” Segura Giral said softly. “A lot of hurt.”
Anabel hernandez and her fairytales strike again, why do people still belive all her whacko stories? she claims lots of bs that never gets to proove. C´mon BB, why this kind of bs articles?
ReplyDeleteHer English version of her book Los señores del narco was just released and was very well received in the English speaking world, she and Aristegui are 2 of the very few journalists with actual balls, she is very respected and admired internationally because she is one brave woman. Sadly u cannot say the same for the great mayority of Mexican journalists.
Delete@10:27 well, sugar, Anabel Hernandez has put her ass on the line for a good long time, and she may not even live in mexico anymore, I would not blame her...
Delete--I promise to suspect her ass when she starts making good will kissy kissy reports of in any way positive propaganda for the mexican governing narco-mierdocracia...
--of course, Anabel Hernandez may fack up once in a while since we are not all perfect, but she has a looong track record of not being exactly a 100% fack-up all the time...
she still lives in the united states, even though she claimed 3 yrs ago to move back to mexico, she did but part time. she is out of touch.
DeleteI don't doubt these low life fucks were tortured. that is Mexican justice.
but the fucked up part of the article is saying these were "poor construction workers" the article shits on the normalistas. these were murderes for 3 years before the case of normalistas. if you live in the area you know. people went to the federal authorites about them well before because of the killings and dissapeances. they knew who to pick up.
Yess, the federales had their ducks lined up, they knew who to blame even before the ayotzinapos hijacked the first bus to go and make trouble on el DF...and got disappeared by the military or paramilitary...but the ayotzinapos disappearance is all the federal government doing...
DeleteMurillo did not say those words ya me canse when with the parents. he said it after presenting the pgr case to the press.
ReplyDeleteScientists have demonstrated no burning of bodies took place at the garbage dump,
ReplyDelete--Gobernacion knows what the hell happened there...
Maybe these guys are GU, and have done many crimes, but these pigs do not do clean kidnappings and disappearances right in front of the noses of police and army while it all gets reported to the brass on C4 as it is happening...
Amen bro.
Deletethe most respected female journalist in Mexico are Adela Navarro Bello of zeta Tijuana and Carmen aristegui.
ReplyDeletenot this phony bullshitter. she is a joke. but she easily sells her bs to those outside mexico, those who do not know better and stuck in English only news.
hernandez wrote lies about dr Mireles without once contacting him. but worse is her practice of embellishing the story. like chapo in prison. she said he had to take Viagra in prison for sex, the problem is Viagra was not on the market for 8 of those years. she is not credible. she lies about her primary place of residence and was a pri party pick to bring down calderon. like everything else 50-50 lies vs truth in that story. but what she does here is unforgiveable. claiming these thugs as innocents. GMAFB
sing it brother
Delete