Investigation tactics draw fire

[Judi Lynn]

Printer-friendly format
E-mail this story

July 16, 2005, 11:56PM

CIUDAD JUAREZ MURDERS
Investigation tactics draw fire
Critics charge police are looking for scapegoats and using torture to get confessions
By IOAN GRILLO
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle


Associated Press



Victor Garcia Uribe visits the grave of his mother last week in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - Victor Garcia Uribe says he sometimes relives the terrifying experience in bad dreams. Other times, he says, he has flashbacks of the horror when he is wide awake, causing him to sweat and tremble.

Garcia recalls the state policemen in ski masks storming into his house, punching his wife to the floor and hustling him into a van.
He tells of a dark room where, he says, the policemen beat him, stubbed cigarettes out on his naked chest and fired bullets at him.
He says he still remembers the pain of having chili-laced water burning in his nostrils and electric shocks surging through his genitals.
But worst of all, Garcia says, he recollects the shame of signing a confession that said he raped and murdered eight women and dumped their bodies in a cotton field, a written testimony that led a court to give him a 50-year prison sentence.
(snip)

International pressure
Intense international pressure has been applied on Mexican authorities to bring to justice the killers of more than 360 women who have died here since 1994. In more than 100 cases, the victims were young, slim brunettes whose bodies were dumped in fields after they had been raped.

President Vicente Fox has promised to use all the weight of the Mexican government to solve the murders and has appointed several federal special prosecutors to look into the cases. Some analysts and human rights workers here charge several convictions were obtained mainly with confessions gained by torture.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3269333
(Free registration required)