- 7/28/10, "Mexico touts drug arrests, but suspects often go free," AP, Watson and Olson, published in Denver Post
- paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war.
Even as President Felipe Calderon's government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence.
Innocent people are tortured into confessing.
The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes.
Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested.
Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and last September, the most recent numbers available. Fewer than a quarter of them were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general's office won't say how many of those were guilty. The judicial void is a key reason why Mexican cartels continue to deliver tons of marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine onto U.S. streets. "It in effect gives them impunity," U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said, "and allows them to be able to function in ways that can extend themselves into the United States." System corrupt, secret Mexico's justice system is carried out largely in secret and has long been viciously corrupt. Add a drug war that Calderon intensified, and the system has been overrun. Nearly 25,000 people have died in the war to date, and the vast majority of their cases remain unsolved. AP obtained court documents and prison records restricted from the public and conducted dozens of interviews with suspects' relatives, lawyers, human-rights groups and government officials to find out what happened after suspects were publicly paraded in key cartel murder cases. In Ciudad Juarez, where a war between two cartels over trafficking routes killed a record 2,600 people in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases that year and got 19 convictions, AP found. Only five were for first-degree murder, court records show, and none came under federal statutes with higher penalties designed to prosecute the drug war. "They never charge anyone with homicide, because they don't have the evidence; they don't have proof," said Jorge Gonzalez, president of the public defenders association. "They just show them to the media to give the impression that they're solving cases." Soldiers in Juarez routinely announce that suspects have confessed to murders. Hector Armando Alcibar Wong, known as "El Koreano," killed 15, they said. But nearly a year after his arrest last August, authorities don't even know where he is. Chihuahua state officials say they handed him over to federal authorities; the attorney general's office says it never had him. Soldiers told the media in 2008 that Juan Pablo Castillo Lopez was tied to 23 killings. He was never charged with homicide and was freed from state prison less than a year later. Oswaldo Munoz Gonzalez, known as "El Gonzo," admitted to killing 40 people, according to the joint police-army operation in Ciudad Juarez. His family says he was tortured into that confession. Eight months later, he hasn't been charged with a single homicide. Authorities say they nabbed Munoz during a traffic stop and found drugs and guns in his truck. His sister, Petra Munoz Gonzalez, says they're lying — he was dragged from his home while his wife and daughters watched. Munoz's family didn't know where he was until they saw him paraded on television days later, with guns and drugs in front of him. "He told me, 'I never killed anyone,' " Petra Munoz said. "He said he confessed because he had been tortured. He told me they put a bag over his head so he couldn't breathe and gave him electric shocks down there (on his genitals) and beat him until he fell over in pain. Who would endure that? "I just ask that the truth be told. Why haven't they presented proof, or witnesses, or anything that incriminates him? It's been almost a year." Chihuahua authorities say they can't discuss open cases. Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez declined several requests for comment. Catch-and-release The attorney general's records show the same pattern of catch-and-release in all states where Calderon's government sent federal police and soldiers to crush the cartels. In Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, nearly 33,000 people were arrested, but 24,000 were freed. In the northern state of Sinaloa, more than 9,700 were detained but 5,606 freed. In Tamaulipas, birthplace of the gulf cartel, nearly 3,600 were detained while 2,083 were freed. Calderon first launched his military assault in December 2006 in his home state of Michoacan, deploying thousands of troops after a new cartel called La Familia rolled five severed heads onto a nightclub's dance floor. Since then, federal forces have arrested more than 3,300 drug suspects. Nearly half have been released. In 2008, drug traffickers in Michoacan lobbed hand grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence. Eight revelers died, making it one of Mexico's highest-profile murder cases. Police and federal authorities arrested three suspects within 10 days. None of the men had criminal records. All three confessed. But at least 16 people say the three men weren't even there. The witnesses — next-door neighbors, relatives, bar owners, waitresses, a corner-store owner and a doctor — told authorities they saw all three that night in Lazaro Cardenas, more than 300 miles from the colonial square in Morelia where the attacks occurred, according to interviews and statements obtained by AP. A move to improve A year after the arrests, an appeals judge dismissed charges of organized crime, terrorism and grenade possession against all three men. The confessions have been retracted, but homicide charges still stand. All three men remain in jail. "I'm really disappointed in the government," said witness Edith Franco, a Lazaro Cardenas doctor. "They didn't look for the culprits. They looked for someone to blame." Even Mexico's president admitted the court system is inept recently as he touted a new judicial system that Mexico has begun to adopt, aided by the U.S. Under the new system, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty; police must investigate and collect evidence before making arrests; and trials are argued in courts open to the public. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided training to 550 Mexican prosecutors. Some 5,000 federal police officers have taken basic investigation courses, also with U.S. funding. The Obama administration is requesting $207 million more. The new system was piloted in Chihuahua state, home to Ciudad Juarez, in 2007 — just before the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels began their bloody war to control drug routes into the United States. Since then, 98 officials who had received training — police investigators, forensic experts, prosecutors — have been assassinated by gangs, said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. Nobody has been arrested in any of those killings."
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