Pubdate: Mon, 06 Jun 2016
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Elisabeth Malkin

A REPORT ON MEXICO'S DRUG WAR CITES CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

MEXICO CITY - Two days after Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadan was 
kidnapped by a criminal gang, the Mexican Army raided the remote 
ranch where he was a prisoner and killed him. As he instinctively 
raised his hands in defense, the soldiers fired over and over at 
point-blank range.

A brief army communique about the event asserted that soldiers had 
returned fire and killed three hit men at the El Puerto ranch on 
April 26, 2010.

But Mr. Parral had fired no weapon.

He was a government employee, the supervisor of a bridge crossing 
into Texas, when he and a customs agent were abducted, according to a 
2013 investigation by the National Human Rights Commission. The case, 
which is still open, has volleyed among prosecutors, yet his parents 
persist, determined that someone be held accountable.

"Tell me if this looks like the face of a killer to you," said Alicia 
Rabadan Sanchez, Mr. Parral's mother, pulling a photograph of a happy 
young man from a plastic folder.

In the years since the Mexican government began an intense military 
campaign against drug gangs, many stories like Mr. Parral's have 
surfaced - accounts of people caught at the intersection of organized 
crime, security forces and a failing justice system.

They are killed at military checkpoints, vanish inside navy 
facilities or are tortured by federal police officers. Seldom are 
their cases investigated. A trial and conviction are even more rare.

But are these cases just regrettable accidents in the course of a 
decade-long government battle against drug violence? A new report by 
the Open Society Justice Initiative, which works on criminal justice 
reforms around the world, argues that they are not. Instead, the 
study says, they point to a pattern of indiscriminate force and 
impunity that is an integral part of the state's policy.

And in the framework of international law, the study argues, the 
killings, forced disappearances and torture constitute crimes against humanity.

The evidence is "overwhelming," said James A. Goldston, the executive 
director of the New York-based Justice Initiative, which will release 
the report on Tuesday. "In case after case, army actors and federal 
police have been implicated."

But in all but a few cases, the allegations languish, are dismissed 
or are reclassified. "The impunity is a loud signal that crimes 
against humanity are being committed," Mr. Goldston said.

The Justice Initiative report is the first time an international 
group has made a public legal argument that the pattern of abuses 
amounts to crimes against humanity. The finding is significant, Mr. 
Goldston said, because under the lens of international law, an 
investigation would seek to determine the chain of command behind the policy.

The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto rejected the conclusions.

"Based on international law, crimes against humanity are generalized 
or systematic attacks against a civilian population which are 
committed in accordance with a state policy," the government said in 
a statement. "In Mexico the immense majority of violent crimes have 
been committed by criminal organizations."

The report does not dispute that last point. Its analysis, which 
covers the six-year administration of former President Felipe 
Calderon and the first three years of Mr. Pena Nieto's government, 
also looks at the Zetas, the most violent of Mexico's drug gangs. 
Their brutal actions constitute crimes against humanity as well, the 
report concludes.

The government said that in the "exceptional cases" in which public 
officials have been shown to be involved in the use of excessive 
force, human rights abuses or torture, they have been tried and sentenced.

But human rights and international organizations have argued for 
years that these cases are not exceptional.

Rather than ask the International Criminal Court to begin an 
investigation, the Justice Initiative proposes that the crimes be 
investigated at home.

"One of the things that we have learned is that Mexico is rich in 
financial resources and human capital in these issues," Mr. Goldston 
said. The Justice Initiative has been working in Mexico for more than a decade.

But the investigations "simply haven't happened because in our view 
the political will is not there," Mr. Goldston said.

The report "explains how we have reached this state of impunity," 
said Jose Antonio Guevara, the director of the Mexican Commission for 
the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. The government's 
"understanding at the highest level is that what they're doing is the 
right thing to weaken organized crime," he said.

The commission was one of five Mexican groups that helped prepare the 
Justice Initiative report.

To break that impunity, the report proposes that Mexico accept 
international help from outside prosecutors with the authority to 
investigate and prosecute atrocities and corruption cases.

Mexico's human rights crisis has commanded international attention 
since 43 students from a local teachers' college were abducted by 
local police officers working with a drug gang in the southern city 
of Iguala in September 2014 as the federal police and military stood by.

"The impunity in Mexico and the circuits of corruption are such that 
they generate pacts so solid that international intervention is 
needed," said Santiago Aguirre, the deputy director of the Miguel 
Agustin Pro Juarez Center for Human Rights.

One model for what the report suggests is in neighboring Guatemala, 
where independent prosecutors uncovered a customs fraud scheme that 
brought down the president last year.

The Mexican government rejected the idea. "Our country has the 
capacity and the will to meet human rights challenges," it said.

The government pointed to the drop in complaints to the National 
Human Rights Commission, to 538 last year from 1,450 in 2012.

It also described recent changes designed to reduce abuses, including 
proposed laws and protocols to prevent torture and investigate 
disappearances. A new law for victims is in effect, and this month 
courts will begin to switch from written to oral trials.

Critics are skeptical that the changes will make much of a difference 
unless they are carried out effectively.

As long as prosecutors in Mexico remain subject to political power, 
said Mr. Aguirre, the impunity will continue. "What's the incentive 
for a prosecutor to be independent? None," he said.

Without real investigations, there are thousands of parents like the 
Parrals, who trudge from one government office to another in search of answers.

It was only through a case file number that appeared on an army 
document 10 months after their son disappeared that they found his body.

Tucked into the archives at the state prosecutor's office was their 
son's government ID, which had been found at the ranch. But his body 
had been tossed into a common grave. An army investigation dismissed 
the case, and it languished with federal prosecutors before it was 
turned back to state prosecutors.

"We think the army is hiding something to protect the commanding 
officers from the atrocities they carry out," said Mr. Parral's 
father, Jorge Parral Gutierrez. "We can see that the prosecutors are 
not free to act."

"The message is that the army ...," began Mr. Parral. His wife 
finished the sentence: " ... has obstructed justice in every way."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom