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Security & Strategic Review - September 2014 (ISSN 1741-4202)

MEXICO: Civilian courts to judge Tlatlaya massacre

For the first time since the April reform of the military code of justice, the civilian authorities will be trying soldiers for involvement in a mass killing of civilians. This was announced in late September, almost three months after the event, which was initially portrayed by the defence ministry (Sedena) and the authorities of México state, as the result of an armed clash ensuing from the ambush of an army patrol by criminals.

The official version of incident, which took place at a warehouse in Tlatlaya on 30 June, was challenged almost immediately by the media and human rights advocates, which suggested that most of the 22 civilian victims had been executed after surrendering [SSR-14-07]. The federal procurator-general’s office (PGR), which took over the formal investigation, remained non-committal invoking the confidentiality of the proceedings. This changed on 19 September, when Esquire Latinoamérica published an exposé on it, supported by firsthand testimony.

On 22 September, President Enrique Peña Nieto told the media that all the questions regarding the episode would be answered by the PGR. Three days later an army officer and seven soldiers were arrested. As the month drew to a close, procurator-general Jesús Murillo Karam announced that three members of the military would be charged with homicide and five others with involvement. He said that after examining the forensic evidence and testimonies given ‘it is clear to us that there was a confrontation between military personnel and a group of criminals who were in the warehouse, which lasted for eight to ten minutes [but] after the firing had ceased three soldiers entered the warehouse and made a new sequence of shots with no justification [...] With what we have we are able to conclude that there was excessive use of force and homicide.’

Murillo added that Sedena was conducting a separate investigation into the actions of the eight soldiers that may constitute offences under the military code. The amendment of the military code of justice stipulates that common or federal crimes committed by members of the military in times of war or ‘other circumstances envisaged in the constitution’ will be dealt with by the military courts ‘whenever the passive subject [the victim] is not a civilian.’

■ In 2013 there were 1,505 reports of torture and abuse by law-enforcement and security officials in Mexico, almost seven times as many as in 2003 says a report entitled Out of Control: Torture and Other Ill-treatment in Mexico, released by Amnesty International (AI) on 4 September. AI notes that the number of torture and abuse cases began to rise in 2006, when the previous Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) administration launched its all-out war of the drug cartels. It says, ‘The large-scale deployment of the army and navy marines in recent years to combat organized crime has been a key factor in the increased use of torture.’ It also noted that the national human rights commission verified less than 1% of the complaints of police abuse it had received, and in 2010-13 none of the complaints on cases of torture led to convictions.

On 12 September the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CMDPDH), the Mexican branch of the Citizen Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) a report on abuses by members of the military and security forces during the Calderón administration. The ICC can only hear cases which national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute.

  • “On 12 September the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CMDPDH), the Mexican branch of the Citizen Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) a report on abuses by members of the military and security forces during the Calderón administration. The ICC can only hear cases which national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute.”

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