Seven Mexican Cops Charged with Torture

MEXICO CITY – Seven police officers are charged with torturing suspects to elicit incriminating information about 22 civilians killed by Mexican soldiers in a June 2014 incident that has become known as the Tlatlaya massacre, the Attorney General’s Office in the central state of Mexico said.

The AG office said the charges were filed based on a recommendation from Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, which conducted an investigation of the killings and of authorities’ handling of the case.

The conclusions of the CNDH regarding the conduct of the seven officers coincided with the findings of the AG office’s own probe, the office said in a statement.

Four of the accused officers were taken into custody and authorities are waiting for a judge to approve arrest warrants for the other three, according to the statement.

The cops physically and psychologically abused three suspects in pursuit of information that would tie the 22 people killed by troops to a criminal organization based in neighboring Michoacan state, the AG office said.

Mexico’s defense department initially said after the June 30, 2014, incident in the town of Tlatlaya that 22 suspected members of a kidnapping gang died in a gunfight with army troops.

But one of the three survivors of the episode subsequently told Esquire magazine that only one of the civilians died in the confrontation, while the others were summarily executed after surrendering and undergoing interrogation.

The federal Attorney General’s Office said last October that 14 people had died in the firefight and the other eight had been killed after they surrendered.

But in a subsequent document, obtained by La Jornada newspaper via a freedom of information request, federal investigators concluded that 11 of the victims were “practically executed,” while five others died while in “instinctive defensive” postures.

The troops fired 160 gunshots, while the civilians only fired 12, three of which wounded army personnel, according to forensic studies cited in the document.

Eight soldiers who participated in the Tlatlaya operation were detained last September.