Cover-ups in 350 Puzzling Deaths: Mexican Police Suspected of Links to Crimes
Ciudad Juarez (Mexico):
Victor Javier Garcia still has a dozen marks across his abdomen and genitals from the burning cigarettes the police used to torture him into falsely confessing to being a serial killer.
It made no difference to a lower court judge that the DNA tests on the bodies identified as his victims were not conclusive. Or that a forensics expert testified that he had been ordered by his superiors to plant false evidence. Or even that witnesses retracted their testimony, saying the police had threatened them into making false statements. Garcia was sentenced to 50 years anyway.Troubling as it is, Garcia's case is not an isolated one.
International observers, human rights workers and federal authorities say it illustrates a disturbing pattern of malfeasance by state law enforcement authorities responsible for investigating Mexico's most gruesome murder mystery: the deaths of more than 350 women in this border area over the last decade, including at least 90 raped and killed in similar ways.Whether through incompetence, corruption or a lurid connection to the killings, the bungling and cover-ups are so extensive, federal investigators say, that the police and other officials have themselves become suspected of links to the crimes.
"The question I and so many other people have," said Guadalupe Morfin, President Vicente Fox's special envoy to Ciudad Juarez, "is why did the authorities go to such lengths to fabricate cases? Maybe, it was because of incompetence. Or maybe it was because they didn't want to be exposed."In a quiet but notable shift, a new set of state officials has taken steps to right past wrongs by reviewing and reopening more than 100 cases. They have called in a team of Argentine forensic experts to exhume unidentified bodies and retrieve others stored in state morgues for DNA tests.There is also a new determination by some courts to scrutinize evidence more carefully. In June, the state Supreme Court of Chihuahua threw out Garcia's case after he spent 3 1/2 years in prison, during which he lost his business, his savings and his wife to another man.
But virtually all agree that the problems swirling around the investigations are profound and far from fixed.Senior officials appointed by Fox two years ago to review the cases have charged that state authorities deliberately played down killings, failed to start searches for missing women in time to rescue them, covered up or falsified crucial evidence and tortured suspects into confessions.Their actions, the officials said, were meant not only to fend off a public relations nightmare as international pressure grew, but also to protect those suspected of actually being behind the killings, including corrupt police, powerful drug traffickers and other organized gangs.Critics of the state say the cover-ups have created a second cycle of injustice that includes the families of the dead and missing as well as those falsely accused and have set back the investigations for years.
The government has created a $30 million fund for the families of the dead, and there is some public sentiment that the falsely accused should receive some of it. But for now, they have little recourse, even in the courts.In the meantime, there are growing signs that the serial-style killings have spread to other cities, like Chihuahua, 200 miles from the border; Toluca, a suburb of Mexico City; the Gulf Coast capital of Veracruz; and Tuxtla Gutierrez in the southern state of Chiapas. Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca says he is considering creating a special prosecutor's office to investigate.
Sept 26, 2005
Ginger Thompson, New York Times
(San Francisco Chronicle, United States)
Ciudad Juarez (Mexico):
Victor Javier Garcia still has a dozen marks across his abdomen and genitals from the burning cigarettes the police used to torture him into falsely confessing to being a serial killer.
It made no difference to a lower court judge that the DNA tests on the bodies identified as his victims were not conclusive. Or that a forensics expert testified that he had been ordered by his superiors to plant false evidence. Or even that witnesses retracted their testimony, saying the police had threatened them into making false statements. Garcia was sentenced to 50 years anyway.Troubling as it is, Garcia's case is not an isolated one.
International observers, human rights workers and federal authorities say it illustrates a disturbing pattern of malfeasance by state law enforcement authorities responsible for investigating Mexico's most gruesome murder mystery: the deaths of more than 350 women in this border area over the last decade, including at least 90 raped and killed in similar ways.Whether through incompetence, corruption or a lurid connection to the killings, the bungling and cover-ups are so extensive, federal investigators say, that the police and other officials have themselves become suspected of links to the crimes.
"The question I and so many other people have," said Guadalupe Morfin, President Vicente Fox's special envoy to Ciudad Juarez, "is why did the authorities go to such lengths to fabricate cases? Maybe, it was because of incompetence. Or maybe it was because they didn't want to be exposed."In a quiet but notable shift, a new set of state officials has taken steps to right past wrongs by reviewing and reopening more than 100 cases. They have called in a team of Argentine forensic experts to exhume unidentified bodies and retrieve others stored in state morgues for DNA tests.There is also a new determination by some courts to scrutinize evidence more carefully. In June, the state Supreme Court of Chihuahua threw out Garcia's case after he spent 3 1/2 years in prison, during which he lost his business, his savings and his wife to another man.
But virtually all agree that the problems swirling around the investigations are profound and far from fixed.Senior officials appointed by Fox two years ago to review the cases have charged that state authorities deliberately played down killings, failed to start searches for missing women in time to rescue them, covered up or falsified crucial evidence and tortured suspects into confessions.Their actions, the officials said, were meant not only to fend off a public relations nightmare as international pressure grew, but also to protect those suspected of actually being behind the killings, including corrupt police, powerful drug traffickers and other organized gangs.Critics of the state say the cover-ups have created a second cycle of injustice that includes the families of the dead and missing as well as those falsely accused and have set back the investigations for years.
The government has created a $30 million fund for the families of the dead, and there is some public sentiment that the falsely accused should receive some of it. But for now, they have little recourse, even in the courts.In the meantime, there are growing signs that the serial-style killings have spread to other cities, like Chihuahua, 200 miles from the border; Toluca, a suburb of Mexico City; the Gulf Coast capital of Veracruz; and Tuxtla Gutierrez in the southern state of Chiapas. Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca says he is considering creating a special prosecutor's office to investigate.
Sept 26, 2005
Ginger Thompson, New York Times
(San Francisco Chronicle, United States)
