MEXICO ACCUSED OF TORTURE IN DRUG WAR

Army Using Brutality To Fight Trafficking, Rights Groups Say

PUERTO LAS OLLAS, Mexico -- The Mexican army has carried out forced
disappearances, acts of torture and illegal raids in pursuit of drug
traffickers, according to documents and interviews with victims, their
families, political leaders and human rights monitors.

From the violent border cities where drugs are brought into the United
States to the remote highland regions where poppies and marijuana are
harvested, residents and human rights groups describe an increasingly
brutal war in which the government, led by the army, is using harsh
measures to battle the cartels that continue to terrorize much of the
country.

In Puerto Las Ollas, a mountain village of 50 people in the southern
state of Guerrero, residents recounted how soldiers seeking
information last month stuck needles under the fingernails of a
disabled 37-year-old farmer, jabbed a knife into the back of his
13-year-old nephew, fired on a pastor, and stole food, milk, clothing
and medication.

In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, two dozen policemen who
were arrested on drug charges in March alleged that, to extract
confessions, soldiers beat them, held plastic bags over their heads
until some lost consciousness, strapped their feet to a ceiling while
dunking their heads in water and applied electric shocks, according to
court documents, letters and interviews with their relatives and
defense lawyers.

The officers were detained at a military base for more than a
month.

Mexican officials acknowledged that abuses have occurred in the fight
against traffickers but described the cases as isolated. In some
instances, drug traffickers may be accusing the army of torture and
other human rights violations as propaganda and to deflect attention
from the government's efforts to dismantle their operations, the
officials said.

"I know that the armed forces are not acting inappropriately, although
there have been some cases," said Interior Minister Fernando Gomez
Mont, who is responsible for coordinating security operations across
Mexico. "The government honestly believes that. There is no incentive
for abuse."

Mexican security forces have long had a spotty human rights record,
but the growing number of abuse allegations appears to be a direct
response to the savagery unleashed by the cartels after President
Felipe Calderon put the military in charge of the drug war in December
2006. Most of the violations have occurred in regions where the sight
of dismembered bodies of soldiers and police is remarkably common. In
the state of Michoacan, investigators with the government's National
Human Rights Commission concluded that the army committed abuses
against 65 people over three days -- including several cases of
torture and the rape of two girls -- after five soldiers were killed
in an attack in May 2007.

The U.S. government has encouraged and, in part, funded, Calderon's
risky strategy of using the army to fight the cartels that handle 90
percent of all cocaine that enters the United States. U.S. officials
said Calderon has initiated reforms that they think ultimately will
increase respect for human rights among soldiers and police.

However, U.S. officials warned that the abuse allegations could lead
Congress to withhold more than $100 million in anti-narcotics assistance.

The cases in Puerto Las Ollas and Tijuana are under investigation by
the National Human Rights Commission, which has been overwhelmed with
more than 2,000 complaints about the army -- 140 a month this year.
The commission has documented 26 cases of abuse, 17 of which involved
torture, including asphyxiation and the application of electric shocks
to the genitals of drug suspects.

"What happens is the army takes [suspects] back to their bases -- and
of course a military base is not a place to detain people suspected of
a crime -- and they begin to ask questions," said Mauricio Ibarra, who
oversees investigations for the commission. "And to help them remember
or to get information, they use torture."

Ibarra said army doctors covered up some torture cases by omitting
physical evidence from medical reports before suspects were handed
over to civilian authorities.

In an interview, Gomez Mont said the military is investigating 15
cases of alleged abuse and, in one, returned indictments against an
officer and four soldiers. He said he did not have information to
identify those cases. Gomez Mont said the military is looking into the
events at Puerto Las Ollas but has found no evidence to corroborate
the torture allegations made by the police and their families in Tijuana.

The Mexican Defense Ministry did not respond to several requests for
an interview on allegations of human rights violations by the army.
Funding the Fight

Under the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion counter-narcotics package
that President George W. Bush requested in June 2007, 15 percent of
the money cannot be released until the secretary of state reports that
Mexico has made progress on human rights. The requirements include the
prosecution of suspected human rights offenders, the prohibition of
testimony obtained through torture and regular consultations with
independent human rights groups.

The State Department's Merida human rights report will be delivered to
Congress within weeks, according to a U.S. official involved in the
process. The official described Mexico's human rights record as "a
mixed bag" and said it remains unclear whether the report will be
enough to satisfy the conditions to release the money.

"This is the hardest part" of Merida, the official
said.

At least $90.7 million already allocated to Mexico to fight drugs
cannot be released unless Congress accepts the State Department's
findings. An additional $24 million is also subject to Merida's human
rights conditions in the supplemental budget package that President
Obama signed on June 24. Part of the Merida funding is for inspection
equipment, police training and support for the Mexican military.

With the Mexican government and governors from U.S. border states
clamoring for more assistance -- drug violence killed 769 Mexicans in
June, one of the worst months since Calderon took office, in December
2006 -- the State Department is hoping that Congress will release the
money despite human rights concerns, according to the U.S. official,
who expressed frustration that the Mexican government has not provided
more information about the army's progress, including the number of
human rights cases that have been prosecuted.

"The military justice system in Mexico is very opaque; it is very hard
to get a handle on how many cases have been brought and what has been
their disposition," said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Mexican government has long opposed the human rights conditions
included in the Merida agreement, and U.S. officials expect a backlash
if Congress refuses to release the money. Many Mexican human rights
activists do not support the conditions, noting that they were imposed
by a U.S government widely accused of torturing prisoners in Iraq,
Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"It really takes a lot of cynicism, a lot of hypocrisy, for the United
States to say, 'We will give you money to fight drug trafficking as
long as you respect human rights,' " said Jose Raymundo Diaz Taboada,
director of the Acapulco office of the Collective Against Torture and
Impunity, which documents abuses in Guerrero.

At the same time, human rights groups have lobbied the U.S. government
to send a blunt message by withholding the money. A letter that a
consortium of U.S. and Mexican organizations sent to the State
Department in January concluded: "Mexican authorities have in no way
adequately met the human rights requirements established in the Merida
Initiative."

"You can't just write a blank check," said Abel Barrera, director of
Tlachinollan, one of the most prominent human rights groups in Mexico.
"It's the citizens who end up suffering. These kinds of programs just
encourage impunity." Suspected Trafficking Ties

With nearly 45,000 troops deployed in parts of Mexico and along the
border, the military has been drawn into a low-intensity conflict in
which drug cartels have committed increasingly horrific acts of
brutality. Of the 12,050 people killed in drug violence from the
beginning of Calderon's term through June, 973 were police officers
and 72 were soldiers, according to Milenio, a Mexican media network
that keeps a running total of casualties.

In many of the country's most conflicted regions, the army has
responded by raiding private homes without search warrants, detaining
people it considers suspects and holding them on military bases in
violation of Mexican law, according to political leaders, residents
and human rights monitors. In Ciudad Juarez, a hotbed of drug violence
across the border from El Paso, the state human rights commission
received about 100 complaints of torture from January 2008 through
February 2009, according to a seven-page report prepared by Gustavo de
la Rosa, who directs the office.

Last March in Tijuana, the military, with the assistance of the local
police chief -- a retired army lieutenant colonel -- arrested 25
police officers suspected of having ties to traffickers. Salvador
Guerrero Flores, a customs agent, said in an interview that he
received a call from a public defender telling him that he had seen
his brother Manuel incarcerated at the base of the army's 28th
Military Battalion and that "he was really beaten up."

Guerrero said it took four days for the army to admit that it was
holding his brother. When he finally saw him, he said, his brother was
covered in bruises. He later told Guerrero that soldiers had beaten
him four times and asphyxiated him with a plastic bag until he passed
out.

"He said he lost consciousness twice and they injected him with
something to revive him," Guerrero said. "He didn't know with what."

In a statement that Manuel Guerrero gave to authorities while still
held by the army, he was asked if he had been tortured.

"Yes, but it's not my wish to detail the actions that I have suffered
on this base, because I'm still in their custody," he responded,
according to court documents.

His physical condition was then noted in his statement: "The subject
Manuel Guerrero Flores shows multiple red contusions, parallel
scratches extending from both armpits, massive swelling in both ankles
and both wrists, swelling in his left ring finger, swelling in his
right index finger, a needle mark or impression that appears to be
blood on his upper right buttock." Storming the Village

In Guerrero state, the army began a crackdown last December after
traffickers kidnapped nine soldiers and left their severed heads in
the parking lot of a Sam's Club in Chilpancingo, the state capital.

On June 9, on the other side of the state, soldiers stormed into the
village of Puerto Las Ollas, situated on a mountain in the middle of
one of the state's most fertile poppy and marijuana-growing regions.
The area is also home to the Revolutionary Army of Insurgent People, a
guerrilla organization that the government has linked to drug
traffickers. The group denies any connection.

The village is made up of 10 wooden shacks with packed-dirt floors and
metal corrugated roofs. Turkeys, chickens, dogs and children fill up
the muddy footpaths that connect the modest dwellings. Residents say
they have no links to the traffickers or guerrillas.

The soldiers arrived in three Humvees in the mid-morning, according to
residents. Wielding G-3 assault rifles, they began to fire on the
town, said residents, who later collected dozens of shell casings from
7.62mm ammunition they said was used in the attack. Most of the men of
Puerto Las Ollas literally ran for the hills, escaping into the dense
forest.

Gomez Mont said one soldier was wounded as troops advanced. Residents
said no shots were fired from the village.

As the soldiers arrived, they encountered Jaime Cesar Acosta, a
37-year-old corn farmer who said he is unable to run because of the
lingering effects of a childhood illness. After he dismounted his
mule, Acosta said, soldiers seized him, stood him up near one of the
trucks, placed a rifle to his head and a long knife to his chin, and
threatened to rape and kill him if he did not provide useful
information.

Acosta said that when he told the soldiers he did not know anything,
they beat him with their fists. One grabbed his arm and began to pull
the hair out, he said. Another took what appeared to be a sewing
needle and stuck it repeatedly under his fingernails as he screamed.

"One of them asked me if I was afraid to die," Acosta said. "I told
him, 'No, if God is ready for me, then it's His will.' "

He said the soldier then picked up a suitcase and bashed him over the
head with it.

Acosta's 13-year-old nephew, Omar Garcia, was nearby when the soldiers
arrived. He said they forced him to remove his black boots, which they
said were military-style and therefore illegal. The boy said he put on
sandals. "Then they started punching me, and they started stomping on
my toes with their boots," he said.

One soldier took a long knife, he said, and repeatedly jabbed the tip
into his lower back, threatening to kill him unless he provided
information about the men who had fled into the mountains and other
"armed men" in the area.

The soldiers freed Acosta and his nephew after four or five hours,
they said. But the army, assisted by reinforcements, continued to
occupy Puerto Las Ollas and Las Palancas, a town composed of just two
houses about half a mile down the road.

The Rev. Lino Rauda, 53, the Las Palancas pastor, said he initially
was not concerned about the soldiers who gathered in an open field
about 100 yards from his house. A few hours after they arrived, he
said, he was walking when one of them called out to him: "Hey, boy,
come over here."

Rauda said he turned to see two soldiers pointing their rifles at him.
"I immediately thought, 'They're going to shoot me,' " he said. He
said he dropped to the ground as six shots whistled over his head.
Rauda said he then fled into the mountains with the soldiers in
pursuit, shooting at him.

Two weeks later, as a Washington Post reporter conducted interviews in
Puerto Las Ollas, the whine of a car engine came from down the road.
Upon hearing it, a woman yelled out:

"Men, listen! A car! A car!"

Half a dozen men suddenly ran in all directions, disappearing into the
trees.

Finally the vehicle appeared, a yellow pickup truck, and two men got
out. They were investigators from the National Human Rights Commission.