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.

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11 Illegal Immigrants Found Hiding among Onion Sacks in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas - U.S. border patrol officers Thursday arrested 11 illegal immigrants, hiding among sacks of onions in the trailer of a truck, traveling through southern Texas, near the Mexican border.

"Upon further inspection, agents found 11 undocumented immigrants concealed between pallets of onions with no means of escape in the event of an emergency," the Border Patrol said in a statement without revealing the nationality of the immigrants.

A patrol dog alerted the officers of possible irregularities in the truck, prompting an inspection.

The driver of the vehicle, a U.S. citizen, was also arrested.

The incident occurred at the Falfurrias checkpoint, one of the points where the U.S. Border Patrol is stationed within the country, to detect illegal activities. 

Journalist Gunned Down in Southern Mexico

OAXACA, Mexico – A journalist who hosted a radio program in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca was fatally shot Thursday, authorities said.

Filadelfo Sanchez was killed around 9:30 a.m. as he left the studios of La Favorita radio in the municipality of Miahuatlan de Porfirio Diaz, the state Attorney General’s Office said.

Police began a search for the perpetrators as investigators and forensic technicians went to the crime scene to collect evidence, the AG’s office said in a statement.

Miahuatlan was among the Oaxaca towns that experienced unrest during the days leading up to the June 7 mid-term elections, when striking teachers and their supporters burned ballots and attacked the offices of political parties.

Another radio newscaster in Oaxaca, Armando Saldaña Morales, was kidnapped in May and found dead two days later. His body bore signs of torture.

Mexico has become Latin America’s most dangerous country for the practice of journalism.

Iranian authorities’ arguments in defence of amputation expose outrageous inhumanity: Amnesty International

 Amnesty International has condemned the amputation of fingers of two young Iranian prisoners in the city of Mashhad in on Sunday 28 June.\

“These brutal punishments flagrantly violate international law and there is no place for them in the criminal justice system. The punishment of amputation is torture, a crime under international law,” Amnesty International said in a statement on Wednesday, 1 July.

“However, Iran’s Penal Code continues to prescribe corporal punishments, such as amputation, flogging and blinding, which violate the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. Under Article 278 of Iran’s Penal Code, the punishment for first-time theft is ‘amputation of the full length of four fingers of the right hand of the thief in such a manner that the thumb and palm of the hand remain.’ Theft for the second time is punishable by ‘amputation of the left foot in such a manner that half of the sole and part of the place of anointing [during religious ablution] remain.’ Third and fourth time offenders are punished with life imprisonment and the death penalty, respectively. “

“Iranian authorities have on numerous occasions defended amputation, including in public, as the best punishment for deterring theft and regretted that they cannot practice it as widely as they would like to because of international condemnation. A month ago, Ayatollah Naeem Abadi, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in southern Hormozgan Province, bemoaned, during a speech in Mashhad, that amputation sentences are not firmly implemented ‘when security can be restored in society by cutting off a few fingers.’ “

“Dismissing the concerns of the UN Human Rights Council about the practice, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of Iran’s Human Rights Council, denied, in October 2010, that corporal punishments such as amputation, flogging and stoning amount to torture and claimed that they are “culturally justified”.  

“Far from providing any semblance of justice and order, the authorities’ arguments in defence of amputation expose the outrageous inhumanity of a criminal justice system that is bent on enforcing cruelty.”

At Least 15 Die in Peru Bus Crash

LIMA – At least 15 people were killed and 19 others injured Wednesday when a bus tumbled 700 meters (2,295 ft) down the side of a mountain in central Peru’s Ancash region, authorities said.

First responders have recovered 15 bodies, but “there are more, apparently,” regional health director Cesar Fallaque told RPP Noticias radio, adding that the dead “are scattered across the slope.”

All 19 injured passengers were initially taken to a hospital in Huaraz and were set to be transferred to better-equipped facilities in Lima, he said.

Four of the injured are in serious condition, Fallaque said.

The accident took place around 4 a.m. at a remote spot on the Conococha-Antamina highway, a police spokeswoman told EFE from the town of Chiquian.

Police are uncertain how many people were aboard the bus, she said.

The bus was traveling from Lima to Llata, a town in the Huanuco region, according to media accounts.