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News (Media Awareness Project) - Mexico: Clinton Touts Solidarity In Drug War
Title:Mexico: Clinton Touts Solidarity In Drug War
Published On:2009-03-27
Source:USA Today (US)
Fetched On:2009-03-27 12:48:09
CLINTON TOUTS SOLIDARITY IN DRUG WAR

Human Rights Groups Accuse Mexican Police of Brutality,
Torture

MEXICO CITY -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured a
Mexican police academy Thursday to show support for law enforcement as
the United States gets more deeply involved in Mexico's bloody war
against drug cartels.

A few hours after she left for Monterrey, federal police held a news
conference to show five drug suspects -- two with severe bruises on
their face -- in the same hangar Clinton had just visited. One man had
an eye nearly swollen shut.

Luis Cardenas, head of intelligence for the Federal Preventative
Police, said the men had confessed to being Zetas, hit men for the
Gulf Cartel.

Cardenas said the suspects had been hurt while resisting arrest after
a shootout that killed a police officer in the central state of
Hidalgo. He refused to give details.

Police identified the men as Daniel Viveros Garcia, 41, and Usiel
Vargas Gonzalez, 31.

Later Thursday, Clinton wrapped up her two-day trip to Mexico by
talking with university students in Monterrey, a city two hours south
of Texas that has been caught up in the wave of drug-related violence
that claimed more than 6,300 lives last year.

"The United States recognizes that drug trafficking is not only
Mexico's problem. It is also America's problem," she told the students.

The United States has already pledged about $1.4 billion to help
Mexico fight the cartels, and this week, it announced a raft of new
border-security measures.

As the United States ramps up its involvement, Mexico's National
Commission on Human Rights and other groups say the Mexican government
is committing police brutality, torturing confessions out of suspects
and trampling civil rights.

A U.S. State Department report last month on human rights in Mexico
even noted the problem: "Cruel treatment and physical abuse in
particular continued to be a serious problem, particularly among state
and local law enforcement elements."

Police frequently beat confessions out of suspects, said Benjamin
Laureano, president of Mexico's Front for Human Rights. "The
authorities do this because they don't have the training, or the
technical and scientific skills they need to build investigations,"
Laureano said.
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