Mexico ( "Papa Smurf " self defense group leader )

Morelia , Michoacán - . Estanislao Beltran, " Papa Smurf " , one of the leaders of the General Council and Community Self-Defense Forces of Michoacan.

Bet at the entrance of one of the legendary caves Servando Gómez Martínez , " La Tuta " , accompanied by a command state and federal police , grabbed his "goat horn " and fired a burst into the air.
"Tuta ! I 'm looking for , "he shouted and gunfire echoed in the cliffs of the Tuscan hills , 20 minutes from the county seat of Arteaga, Bonnet earth , on the border with the town of Tumbiscatío .
But the only surviving leader of the Knights Templar cartel did not respond.
A few meters from " Papa Smurf " a rusty metal door and roll side gave entrance to a damp , dark cave , with fresh tracks and tennis shoe on the ground, and with a length that was possible to observe up to 100 meters deep. The cave is narrow sections that require crawling , but open to vault up to 10 meters high.
The path to the cave is interrupted by a natural pool fed by an underground tributary of a river, about seven feet long, but there is a alternating tunnel made ​​by humans around the pool and continues the tunnel for 30 yards , after which the depth of it is lost in darkness .

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BRASILIA (Activists Decry Murder of Retired Brazilian Colonel Who Admitted to Torture )

 

BRASILIA – Rights defenders on Saturday denounced the murder of a retired army colonel who testified last month that Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship tortured its political opponents, saying it was proof that the erstwhile regime’s former agents remain active.

Paulo Malhães, 74, was killed Thursday at his home in suburban Rio de Janeiro by suspected burglars, who stole computers and guns after spending nearly 10 hours inside the residence.

The victim’s wife, Cristina Batista Malhães, who was also inside the home, said the two were tied up in different rooms and that she did not know at what point the robbers killed her husband.

Police say he was suffocated.

The retired colonel testified in March to Brazil’s Truth Commission, which is investigating rights violations during the dictatorship, that he illegally detained and tortured regime opponents.

Malhães, who provided graphic details of the torments, said one of his victims was lawmaker Rubens Paiva, whose daughter said Saturday she is convinced the retired military man was murdered to prevent him from making further revelations.

Vera Paiva told the daily O Dia that agents of the former regime remain active and are seeking to prevent the “historical truth” from being exposed.

She recalled that another admitted torturer, Col. Julio Miguel Molina Dias, who was also implicated in her father’s 1971 kidnap-murder, was killed in an alleged robbery in 2012.

The Truth Commission, established in 2011 by the administration of President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist militant who suffered torture and was imprisoned for more than two years during the dictatorship, also demanded that authorities get to the bottom of Malhães’s killing.

“The murder and its possible relation with the revelations made by Malhães ... must be rigorously and expeditiously investigated,” the commission said Friday.

Mexico ( Three Found Murdered in Mexican Resort City )

 

MEXICO CITY – Three people were found shot to death on the outskirts of the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, a Mexican official told Efe.

The victims, who were discovered in the wee hours of Thursday in the Palma Sola neighborhood, have yet to be identified.

Police collected around 45 shell casings at the scene, a source in the Guerrero state Attorney General’s Office said.

The bodies were taken to the medical examiner’s office in Acapulco, a one-time major international tourist destination that has lost its luster due in part to organized crime-related violence.

Guerrero registered 77 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2012, Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography said in a report issued last July.

The state government, with support from federal authorities, launched an operation in 2011 to bolster security in areas frequented by tourists

CAIRO ( Police General killed when bomb went off Wednesday )

CAIRO: A police brigadier general was killed when a bomb exploded under his car on Wednesday, security officials said, in the fifth such targeted attack in Egypt’s capital within a week.The blast in the upscale western suburb of Oct. 6 killed Ahmed Zaki, a commander of Egypt’s central security forces who have spearheaded a crackdown on supporters of ousted President Muhammad Mursi.Militants have launched scores of attacks mainly targeting security forces since the military deposed Mursi last July after massive protests calling for his resignation.The general was fatally wounded as he headed for work, security officials said, adding that two conscripts were wounded in the attack.Zaki was the third senior police officer to be killed in Cairo since the start of the year. Three other police have been killed in four more attacks over the past week.

Iran ( Prison official denies attack on Evin prisoners )

Saturday, Apr 19 2014        

 

The head of Iran's Prison Organization denies that Evin Prison was the site of any recent violence or attacks.

ILNA reports that Gholamhossein Esmaili said such rumours are merely being spread by "anti-Revolutionaries" and have no substance.

On Thursday, the Kaleme website reported that forces from the intelligence ministry, Revolutionary Guards and over 100 soldier guards swarmed Ward 350 of Evin Prison and beat more than 30 political prisoners.

The prisoners were reportedly protesting to "an aggressive inspection procedure" that had taken over five hours.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency, HRANA, also reports that many prisoners were severely injured in this incident.

The head of Tehran prisoners, Sohrab Sokeymani, also denied that the event took place.

In a new report, the Kaleme opposition website has denounced the denials of the prison authorities. The report says prisoners who had been sent to Taleghani Hospital yesterday have been collected by prison authorities and returned to Evin to avoid any further scandal.

Radio Zamaneh

TEHRAN ( Iranian woman on death row to be executed " If she tells the truth " victim will spare her life )

 TEHRAN: An Iranian woman on death row for the murder of an ex-intelligence official could be forgiven if “she tells the truth,” the son of her alleged victim said Saturday.
Interior designer Reyhaneh Jabbari has been sentenced to death for the 2007 slaying of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, which a UN human rights monitor claims was done in self-defense against a potential rapist.



 Judiciary officials say there is no date yet for her execution but her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi warned last week it could be “carried out within a month.”
Jalal, Sarbandi’s eldest son, told Iranian reformist dailies Shargh and Etemad that his family “will not even contemplate mercy until truth is unearthed.”
“Only when her true intentions are exposed and she tells the truth about her accomplice and what really went down will we be prepared to grant mercy,” he said.
According to Jalal, Jabbari, 26, testified that a man was present in the apartment where his father was stabbed to death “but she refuses to reveal his identity.”
His comments come just days after a young Iranian man convicted of murder escaped a hangman’s noose in Iran when his victim’s mother intervened, slapping him in the face and declaring forgiveness.
The UN says that more than 170 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2014.
Jabbari’s case has triggered domestic and international condemnation.
Iranian actors and other prominent figures have launched an appeal against her execution, echoing similar calls being made in the West.
The United Nations and several international rights groups say Jabbari’s confession was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors.
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s human rights rapporteur on Iran, said on Monday that her trial had been deeply flawed and apparently acted in self-defense.
“The Iranian authorities should review her case and refer it back to court for a re-trial, ensuring the defendant’s right to due process which is guaranteed under both Iranian law and international law,” said Shaheed.
He quoted “reliable sources” as saying that the victim, Sarbandi, had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office and took her to an apartment where he sexually abused her.
But Jalal Sarbandi insists that his father’s murder was premeditated, adding that Jabbari confessed to having bought a knife two days earlier.
“She (also) sent a text message to her boyfriend saying she would kill him,” he said.
But Shaheed said that Jabbari only stabbed Sarbandi in the shoulder and had called for an ambulance before fleeing the scene.

Barcelona ( Over 30 Indigenous Groups in Colombia Threatened with Extinction )

BARCELONA, Spain – At least 34 of the more than 100 native ethnicities and indigenous communities living in Colombia are going through a “humanitarian crisis” and are threatened with extinction, according to the Autonomy and Rights Observatory for Colombia’s Indigenous Peoples (ADPI).

A Colombian activist at the Observatory, Juan Manuel Avila, living in Barcelona, Spain, told Efe that Colombia’s indigenous population totals almost 1.5 million and their lifestyle is based on the principles of “balance among living creatures, harmony, give-and-take, and defense of the common good.”

But 34 of these peoples see their way of life endangered and live under the threat of their kind disappearing, as the Colombian Constitutional Court recognized in 2009. Since then, things have only gotten worse, Avila said.

ADPI is an association of organizations and individuals who work in Barcelona to defend the human rights and collectives of Colombian Indians.

Avila said these native peoples are living through a “humanitarian crisis, due chiefly to the armed conflict” between the Colombian armed forces and the FARC guerrillas, “which is being fought in some indigenous territories” and has made the Indians “victims of both sides.”

So what the indigenous movement demands, he says, is that they be “left out of the conflict and their lands demilitarized.”

Indian ethnicities have not been invited to take part in the negotiations between the government and the guerrillas, according to Avila, who says indigenous peoples like the Awa, the Nasa and the Senu particularly fear the launching of “macroprojects based on an extractive economy, because they will only generate violence for control of the territory.”

Another problem Indians have suffered is “international invisibilization” – few remember they even exist.