Extrajudicial Killings

Introduction

Nearly 35,000 people were killed in violence related to organized crime from December 2006 to January 2011, according to official statistics. President Calderón has claimed 90 percent of these victims were members of cartels, killed by rival criminal groups or in confrontations with security forces; 6 percent were state officials; and 1 percent were innocent victims. There are significant reasons to question the reliability of those figures, including evidence of widespread tampering with crime scenes by security forces, the dearth of criminal investigations into the killings, and evidence, detailed below, that a significant number of extrajudicial killings are never reported.

It is lawful for security forces to use lethal force when necessary to prevent loss of life and serious injury to themselves or others, provided the force is proportionate to the threat posed. Police and military officers in Mexico often face serious threats from members of organized crime, and as such some killings are likely the result of legitimate use of force by officers during confrontations. It is also reasonable to assume that a significant number of killings are perpetrated by rival criminal groups, which engage in violent battles to control illicit trades and territory.

Human Rights Watch obtained credible evidence in 24 cases that security forces committed extrajudicial killings. These killings fall into two categories: civilians executed by authorities or killed by torture; and civilians killed at military checkpoints or during shootouts where the use of lethal force against them was not justified. In the majority of these cases, strong evidence points to security forces—particularly the military—tampering with crime scenes to manipulate or destroy evidence. In some cases, these tactics seemed aimed at presenting the appearance that the killings had been carried out by drug cartels.

Despite the mounting deaths associated with organized crime, investigations into killings—especially those where initial signs point to the involvement of state officials—have been plagued by mistakes and negligence on the part of prosecutors. Rather than question security forces’ official reports of confrontations—many of which are marred by inconsistencies and conflict with witness accounts—investigators accept such reports as fact, and do not bother to conduct real inquiries. In the rare instances when investigations are opened, prosecutors fail to take basic steps, such as conducting ballistics tests or interviewing witnesses. As a result, investigations are not concluded, those responsible are not brought to justice, and impunity persists.

These failures are especially pronounced in the killings investigated within the military justice system. Not only are investigations by military prosecutors ineffective and opaque, but military authorities also pressure victims’ families to sign compensation agreements prohibiting them from pursuing criminal punishments—a violation of their right to a comprehensive legal remedy. In the two instances during the Calderón administration in which military officers were convicted for killing civilians, they were sentenced to approximately one year in military prison—an extremely lenient punishment that does not reflect the severity of the crime.

Given the lack of thorough and impartial investigations and the repeated manipulation of evidence by soldiers and police, it is impossible to know how many killings are in fact lawful. Yet it is clear that there is no sound empirical foundation for the continued assertion by President Calderón and other state officials that 90 percent of the victims in Mexico’s “war on drugs” are criminals, or that the majority were killed either by rival gangs or in shootouts with security forces. The lack of reliable data is particularly troubling given the evidence, set forth below, that the cases we examined are not isolated ones but examples of a more pervasive practice. 

Prohibition of Extrajudicial Killings

An extrajudicial killing is an intentional, unlawful killing by state security forces. In this report we use the term to encompass all unlawful loss of life at the hands of law enforcement agents and the Armed Forces, including not only deliberate targeted unlawful killings but also deaths resulting from excessive use of force. Force used by law enforcement is considered excessive when it contravenes the principles of absolute necessity or proportionality, as interpreted in the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials.[460] In particular, security forces may only use lethal force where it is absolutely necessary to prevent loss of life and serious injury to themselves or others, provided the force is proportionate to the threat posed.

Extrajudicial killings violate basic human rights, including the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to a fair and public trial, as well as the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.[461] Under international law, Mexico has an obligation to criminalize and prevent extrajudicial executions. It is also obligated to ensure that any potential violations are promptly, thoroughly, impartially, and independently investigated, that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions, and that victims and/or relatives are provided fair and adequate compensation. These obligations derive from international human rights law, including treaty-based obligations such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[462] and the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR).[463]

According to the jurisprudence of Mexico’s Supreme Court, the use of force by law enforcement officials—an act that by its nature infringes upon certain rights—must comply with the principle of “reasonability” (razonabilidad), which the Court defines as:

1) [The acts] be carried out based on the law and with a lawful end, and with a foundation upon which to act; 2) The force used be necessary for the end sought; 3) The force used be proportional to the circumstances presented. All of the above are framed by the fulfillment of the principles established in article 21 of the Constitution of Mexico, which provide the guiding principles for police activities and respect for all human rights.[464]

Prevalence of Killings and Government Rhetoric

President Calderón has repeatedly claimed that 90 percent of the victims of drug-related homicides are members of cartels, who are killed either by rival criminal groups or in confrontations with security forces. In a public meeting with civil society, for example, he claimed: “more than 90 percent of the deaths are people linked to one or another criminal group in this conflict/war on drugs. About 6 percent are authorities/officials who die as a consequence of criminal attacks. And… approximately 1 percent, the statistic that most hurts society, are innocent victims.”[465]

These figures appear to be drawn from a database of nearly 35,000 “presumed homicides related to organized crime” that the Calderón administration made public in January 2011.[466]Compiled from figures contributed by law enforcement, military, and civilian authorities, the database divides homicides into three broad categories.[467]The first category is labeled “executions,” which the government indentifies mainly by two characteristics: the victims’ bodies show extreme forms of violence, and more than one person was killed. The second category is homicides resulting from “attacks/assaults and confrontations” (agresiones y enfrentamientos), which are generally defined as clashes between authorities and suspected criminals, or between rival criminal groups. And the third is “attacks on authorities” (agresión contra la autoridad), or homicides resulting from attacks by criminal groups that directly target state officials. 

The five states surveyed in this report account for a significant portion of the deaths tied to organized crime, according to official government figures. Together, the five states account for nearly 15,000 “executions” from December 2006 to 2010, broken down as follows: 1,901 executions in Baja California; 9,793 in Chihuahua; 2,400 in Guerrero; 683 in Nuevo León; and 183 in Tabasco. The five states also account for more than 1,100 deaths in “attacks and confrontations” from 2006 to 2010, including 119 deaths from “attacks and confrontations” in Baja California; 342 in Chihuahua; 339 in Guerrero; 288 in Nuevo León; and 18 in Tabasco.[468]

Notably, according to the government’s methodology, executions by definition do not include killings by public officials. Therefore it is logical to deduce that, as the government reads the data, none of the thousands of executions listed in the database is an extrajudicial killing. As such, the data provide a grossly inadequate basis for assessing the causes of casualties in the “war on drugs.”

Take, for example, the killing of four civilians whose bodies were discovered on April 14, 2011, in a shallow grave in Ciudad Juárez. Three of the victims’ throats had been slit and the fourth had been strangled. All showed signs of torture.[469] These killings met the two defining characteristics of “executions” used in the government’s database—they were violent and there were multiple victims—and so presumably were classified as executions, with criminal gangs assumed to be the perpetrators. Yet public pressure by the victims’ families, together with determined efforts by the special visitor for the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission to track down witnesses, paints a different picture. According to five civilians, the victims were last seen being detained by municipal police officers, suggesting their deaths may have been extrajudicial executions.[470] Following an investigation by state prosecutors, several police officers were detained and charged with the disappearances; they are currently in prison in Chihuahua while the investigation continues.[471]

Even if the classification of these killings was changed by the government and the database updated accordingly after charges were brought against the police officers (and we have no reason to believe this was done), the unfortunate reality is that our research indicates that most cases where there is evidence of security force involvement in killings are never investigated. Such cases thus presumably appear in the database as “executions” perpetrated by criminal groups.

Human Rights Watch repeatedly requested information from government officials regarding how many of the approximately 35,000 homicides allegedly tied to organized crime in the database published in January 2011—as well as the thousands more killed since that time—have been investigated; and how many of those investigations have led to suspects being prosecuted and convicted. Yet officials from the Calderón administration, as well as federal, state, and military prosecutors, were consistently unwilling or unable to provide this information. The little information that was shared, after repeated written requests by Human Rights Watch, was opaque and incomplete. However, the data obtained, together with figures amassed in more than 50 public information requests submitted by Human Rights Watch, supports a conclusion that only a tiny fraction of the cases are being adequately investigated and prosecuted. For example, the federal prosecutor’s office informed Human Rights Watch that it registered 13,845 killings from December 2006 to January 2011.[472] (According to the Mexican Constitution, if indeed these killings were all tied to organized crime, federal prosecutors have the power to investigate and prosecute them.[473]) The federal prosecutor’s office provided conflicting information as to how many of these homicides it was investigating—first reporting in May 2011 that they had opened 1,687 homicide investigations,[474] and then in August saying they had only opened 997.[475] Of these investigations, only 343 suspects had been charged as of August.  And according to the federal courts, in only 22 cases have federal judges convicted suspects for homicides and other injuries tied to organized crime during this period.[476] 

State governments and prosecutors were also unwilling or unable to provide information about how many homicides tied to organized crime had been investigated and prosecuted at the state level. Several states, such as Guerrero and Tabasco, did not answer requests for such information filed in public information requests.[477] And data provided by the states that did respond revealed that only a tiny fraction of homicides have concluded in criminal sentences. For example, the state prosecutor’s office in Chihuahua opened nearly 10,000 investigations into homicides from 2007 to March 31, 2011. In that period, only 242 cases ended in criminal sentences.[478]

The scant data on prosecutions and sentencing available from federal and state prosecutors suggests that the majority of killings are still being investigated, if investigations have been opened at all. When coupled with the cases of likely extrajudicial executions documented in this chapter—which themselves are often passed off as executions, attacks, or confrontations carried out by organized crime—these findings point to a significantly higher incidence of extrajudicial killings than acknowledged by the government. And they raise serious doubts about the credibility of the Calderón government’s claims regarding the criminal ties of nearly all victims and most perpetrators of “homicides related to organized crime.”

Killing by Excessive Use of Force

In several cases, Human Rights Watch found that security forces resorted to lethal force against civilians when it was unnecessary to prevent loss of life or serious injury to themselves or others.

For example, at approximately 9 p.m. on September 5, 2010, seven civilians were driving on a highway near Apodaca, Nuevo León. In a confidential report on the incident submitted to the Senate on October 13, 2010, the military said that the civilians’ car had sped up to pass a military convoy, after which a captain shot at the car’s tires, and then three other soldiers opened fire on the car.[479]Fifteen-year-old Alejandro De León and his father, Vicente, passengers in the car, were both killed. Five other passengers were wounded, including two children, ages 8 and 9. The military admitted that "there was no attack against military personnel" from the car, and that the three soldiers who opened fired after the captain did so "because of inertia." These findings contradict the military’s initial account that soldiers had fired on the vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint.[480] Military prosecutors charged three officers and the captain with the crime of "violence against persons causing homicide," but it is unknown what progress has been made in the investigation.[481] Our request to meet with the military in Nuevo León to discuss details of this and other cases was not granted.

In a separate incident on October 28, 2010, the Army received an anonymous tip that armed men had set up an illegal roadblock near García, Nuevo León. When army vehicles approached the site, armed men scattered and fired at the approaching soldiers, according to official accounts.[482]A witness who was working on a construction site next to where the incident took place said one of the military vehicles began pursue a pick-up truck driven by Fernando Osorio Álvarez, a 36-year-old architect. Soldiers told the driver to stop several times, but when he did not respond, they opened fire on the vehicle, the witness said.[483]Several minutes after the firing stopped, the witness said he heard three shots ring out. Osorio was found dead in the car.

Osorio never fired on the military, nor was he armed, according to two passengers who were in the truck with him.[484]The federal prosecutor’s office and the military released statements saying he had died from wounds “as a result of the confrontation” between the military and the armed criminals.[485]

The federal prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the incident,[486]as did the military prosecutor’s office.[487] The witness told Human Rights Watch that neither civilian nor military prosecutors interviewed him or other workers in the aftermath of the incident. A representative of the federal prosecutor’s office told Human Rights Watch they were investigating the incident, but offered no additional information on the progress of the investigation.[488]

Presenting Victims of Extrajudicial Killings as “Collateral Damage” or Criminals

In the immediate aftermath of killings, victims are routinely labeled by security forces as criminals or as “collateral damage” (daños colaterales) of shootouts between security forces and armed persons—determinations that are made before an investigation has been conducted into the incidents leading to the deaths. Such preemptive public statements, which are disseminated by security forces and prosecutors in press releases and interviews with journalists, reveal officials’ tendency to accept security forces’ accounts as fact, instead of conducting thorough, impartial investigations. This unquestioning acceptance of official accounts cuts against the presumption of innocence of victims and is especially problematic in light of some officials’ track record of manipulating crime scenes, as described later in this chapter.

For example, Abraham Sonora Ortega, 17, was killed on October 26, 2010, in Atlixtac, Guerrero. A press release issued by the Army the following day alleged that Sonora was an “aggressor” and had been killed when the military repelled an attack by approximately 20 “organized crime members,”[489] in which not a single soldier was wounded. Various news stories in subsequent days cited Army officials and civilian investigators claiming that the victim had been killed after firing on soldiers. For example, in one story sources from the state prosecutor’s office said that the victim “was watching over a field of poppies and upon observing the convoy of soldiers, fired at them with an AK 57 (sic) rifle to scare them off, as a result of which the soldiers responded to the attack.”[490](In its version of events, the prosecutor’s office said there were only two men—one of whom was Sonora—that opened fire on the soldiers, contradicting the military’s account that there were 20 attackers.)

However, Sonora’s parents and members of the small community where he lived said he had left on the morning of his death to look for his family’s donkey that had escaped, that he was unarmed,[491] and that soldiers would not allow them near the scene of the alleged shootout for six hours after shots were fired, pointing their weapons at the victim’s mother when she tried to approach the crime scene.[492]This last fact raises questions about whether or not the victim died immediately and whether the crime scene was tampered with. In her formal complaint before the state prosecutor’s office, the victim’s mother said: “I ask that the soldiers put a stop to this—that they don’t commit these crimes or intimidate us, that they don’t humiliate us in our communities and homes, and that they don’t make up stories that aren’t true, like the ones that appear in the newspapers saying that [my son] was a hitman and a trafficker who was guarding drug crops, because this is not true, it is a lie.”[493] Human rights groups in Guerrero said their inquiries with the military prosecutor’s office regarding what progress if any has been made in the investigation in the case have yielded no response.[494]

Around midnight on March 19, 2010, Javier Arredondo Verdugo, 24, and Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso, 23, students at Monterrey Institute of Technology in Nuevo León, were killed as they exited the campus. The military initially claimed the students were “hitmen” who were killed in a firefight after opening fire on soldiers,[495] pointing to weapons allegedly found on them as evidence. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the state prosecutor’s office supported the military’s account, telling a top university official of the victims, “I assure you 100 percent that they were not students.”[496]Yet security camera footage and a subsequent investigation by the National Human Rights Commission later revealed the victims had been unarmed students; that their identification and other possessions had been confiscated; and that arms had been planted on them.[497]What’s more, autopsies revealed that both victims suffered physical abuse before dying, and that one student’s gunshot wounds were inflicted at point blank range, execution-style.

Manipulating Crime Scenes

In several incidents we investigated in which civilians were killed, security forces provided false accounts of how the killings and manipulated, concealed, or destroyed evidence to make victims appear to be criminals or the casualties of fabricated shoot outs. Meanwhile, the justice officials responsible for investigating the deaths often embraced these “official accounts” before conducting investigations into what happened, betraying a clear lack of impartiality and casting doubt on the objectivity of their future investigations. They also failed to prosecute officials who tampered with evidence.

For example, on April 3, 2010, Martín and Bryan Almanza Salazar, 9 and 5, were killed and five other civilians were wounded when the car they were riding in came under fire near Matamoros, Tamaulipas.[498] The Army claimed the deaths were the result of a shootout between soldiers and criminals, and on April 30 Military Attorney General José Luis Chávez García said in a news conference that a military investigation into the incident had concluded that the children were killed by a grenade fired by criminals.[499]However, a subsequent investigation by the National Human Rights Commission refuted the conclusions of the military's investigation and found that soldiers had manipulated evidence to support its falsified account, including most likely transporting several cars to the crime scene after the incident to present the appearance of a shootout:

…the evidence obtained by this commission shows that the pick-up trucks that were positioned around the victims’ vehicle at the time an officer from the federal prosecutor’s office carried out the inspection [of the crime scene]…may have been placed there with the aim of altering the crime scene and making it appear as though there had been a confrontation, and that the deaths of minors Bryan and Martín Almanza Salazar, as well as the wounds of victims 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9, were caused by crossfire resulting from a confrontation between military officers and members of organized crime. [500]  

This manipulation was corroborated by the accounts of the surviving passengers, who told the commission that there had been no shootout with criminals and that the military had opened fire on their vehicle without warning. Neither the military nor civilian investigations have resulted in officers being sentenced for the killing or manipulation of evidence.[501]  

Similarly, following a shootout in Anáhuac, Nuevo León, on March 3, 2010, the Army released a statement saying that soldiers had killed eight armed criminals (“delincuentes”) who had opened fire on a military convoy.[502]However, eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that two of the individuals presented as criminals were in fact unarmed civilians who were executed by soldiers.[503] According to the eyewitnesses, Rocío Romeli Elías Garza and Juan Carlos Peña Chavarria were caught in the middle of a shootout as they walked out of the factory where they worked. They took shelter in their car, and one of them was wounded in the crossfire. After the shootout ended, soldiers approached the two unarmed civilians, who were pleading for help, and shot them at close range. Then, according to witnesses, they placed bulletproof vests on their bodies and planted guns on them.[504]The victims’ family told Human Rights Watch that in a meeting with the military, a colonel acknowledged that Elías and Peña were innocent civilians and that the military had placed arms on their bodies, claiming it was part of the military’s “procedure” to place arms in the hands of bodies near which they appeared. The state prosecutor's office later issued a statement acknowledging that no evidence suggested Elías and Peña "belonged to any criminal group or organization, nor have they been identified by anyone as participants in the incident in which they lost their lives."[505]

Human Rights Watch met with more than 30 homicide crime scene investigators from Ciudad Juarez and the city of Chihuahua, as well as 16 investigative judicial police from a special unit of the Chihuahua State Prosecutor’s Office assigned to guarding the scene of a crime. According to these officials, key evidence was often missing from the scenes of killings involving security forces or had been tampered with. “At the crime scene, something is always missing,” said one investigator.[506] Another investigator told Human Rights Watch that security forces, “move evidence—sometimes they even remove it. They confiscate arms, they move around vehicles, they adjust bodies.”[507] 

For example, crime scene investigators from the Chihuahua State Prosecutor’s Office told Human Rights Watch they arrived at the location of an alleged shootout that resulted in two civilian deaths in September 2010in Ciudad Juárez to find more than 60 soldiers at the crime scene, according to an incident report provided to Human Rights Watch.[508] According to investigators, the soldiers denied them access to the crime scene for over an hour, and threatened them when they began to take photos. When the soldiers eventually departed and allowed them access to the crime scene, investigators found a car containing the bodies of two civilians. Although soldiers said the two had been killed in the shootout, the investigators found extensive evidence suggesting the crime scene had been manipulated. For example, although the victims’ bodies presented multiple gunshot wounds, investigators only found “one shell of caliber 308, the same kind that are used by soldiers in the Mexican Army,” suggesting soldiers had taken the other casings from the bullets that were fired. Also, a witness who lived nearby told investigators that he had seen, “that the soldiers were firing at the vehicle, and that when the vehicle stopped, the witness saw [the soldiers] take the [victims’] bodies out of their car and putting others in their place.” The investigators determined that the placement of the victims’ gunshot wounds did not correspond to the trajectories of bullet holes in the vehicle in which they were found, corroborating the witness’ account that the bodies had been moved.[509]

Framing Extrajudicial Killings as Drug-Related Deaths

In several cases we examined, crime scenes were manipulated to give the appearance that the victim was targeted by criminals in drug-related disputes. Together with the accounts of torture victims—several of whom told Human Rights Watch that security forces who interrogated them threatened to kill them and make their deaths look related to cartel violence—such cases raise concern that in some cases security forces may be covering up extrajudicial killings as violence between rival organized crime groups.

For example, the body of José Humberto Márquez Compeán, 26, was found on March 22, 2010, with signs of torture in an empty lot near the municipality of San Nicolás, Nuevo León. Drugs were found atop his tortured body, which was wrapped in a sheet, suggesting he had died in a drug-related killing. However, photographs in the press revealed that the victim had last been seen the day before when he was detained by the Navy and municipal police, and an investigation by the National Human Rights Commission found that security forces were likely responsible for his execution. The location of the body and the placement of drugs, the commission said, “seem to indicate that the perpetrators of [Márquez’s] death were trying to leave signs that it was another homicide tied to the drug trade.”[510] According to information provided on the Navy’s website, military prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident, but the institution has not provided any information regarding its progress.[511] 

Likewise, federal police detained Arnulfo Antunez Sandoval, 37, on August 26, 2010, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, as he drove home with his wife and children, according to his wife’s testimony.[512]Antunez’s body was discovered the next day in an abandoned house, without any identification and surrounded by syringes used for intravenous drugs.[513] However, while an initial report filed by investigators hypothesized that the victim had died of a drug overdose, a forensic examiner later determined that he had died of a blunt strike to the head.[514]Chihuahua state prosecutors told Human Rights Watch that the placement of the body suggested that those responsible wanted to make the victim appear to be a drug user, when in fact Antunez had been beaten to death.[515]Although he was last seen in the custody of federal police, no officers have been charged in the case.[516]

Such accounts are underscored by the testimonies of dozens of victims of torture, who said their interrogators told them that they would kill them and, in some cases, would make them look like victims of organized crime. Víctor Manuel Ávila Vázquez, who was tortured by soldiers after being arbitrarily detained in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, told a judge that his interrogators warned him, “Nobody knows that I have you here. Your family—nobody is going to hear about it. So you see I can wipe you off the map. You won’t be the first. There are others [that have come before you”].[517]Francisco Daniel Flores Ramos said that soldiers who tortured him on a military base in Tijuana said, “if they had to kill me they would, that my life didn’t matter to them, that once I was dead they would simply throw my body somewhere with a sign like the ones that the cartels place on bodies, and that they wouldn’t have any problems.”[518]

Tortured to Death

In a handful of cases, evidence strongly suggests that civilians died during or shortly after being tortured by authorities, as a result of the abuse they suffered. In none of these cases, however, has an adequate investigation been conducted into official responsibility.

These deaths include two taxi drivers who were arrested by investigative judicial police in Cárdenas, Tabasco, on November 9, 2009. One was Margarito Landero Acuña, 38, who according to the prosecutor’s office, was arrested at a checkpoint in Cárdenas, Tabasco, because “he was prowling around the patrol routes taken by [police and soliders] in a suspicious way.”[519]When brought to the investigative judicial police station, Landero allegedly confessed voluntarily to having transported drugs to a hotel on one occasion, although he had no drugs on him at the time he was arrested.[520] A medical exam administered that same day found no recent injuries.[521]Landero’s family was never notified of his arrest, and when they inquired about his whereabouts with various authorities, all denied having detained him. As a result, they filed an amparo on his behalf on November 10, alleging that he was being held incommunicado and tortured.[522]

Landero was released on November 11 without charge, nearly two full days after his arrest. He was in such poor physical shape, his family told Human Rights Watch, that he could hardly walk, and when he arrived home he told his family he had been tortured by police.[523] He said his interrogators had crushed his fingers with their boots, waterboarded him, asphyxiated him with plastic bags, jumped up and down on his back, and beaten him repeatedly, forcing him to sign blank pages. He said his interrogators told him that if he told anyone what had happened to him, they would come after his family. Afraid to file a complaint and bedridden by extreme physical pain, his condition worsened with each day. On November 14, the pain became unbearable, and his family took him to the hospital, where he suffered a first heart attack around midday. According to his family, doctors said that he was suffering from severe internal bleeding and that his lungs had filled with blood. At 11 p.m., he suffered his second heart attack and died.

Landero’s parents said a pair of judicial investigative police came to his funeral the day after his death. A uniformed officer approached the victim’s mother and said, “We were with him there,” which she took to mean that he was one of the interrogators who had tortured her son. He asked her what Landero had died of, to which she responded, a heart attack. The officer thanked her and left. The family took the very fact of the visit and questioning to be a threat not to denounce the causes of his death. In addition, though the officials’ visit confirmed that the prosecutor’s office knew of Landero’s death, no investigation has ever been opened into the causes, the family told Human Rights Watch.

In a separate incident, Raúl Brindis, 35, was arbitrarily detained by police and soldiers on the same day as Landero in Cárdenas, Tabasco, and died in custody. While state prosecutors claimed he died of respiratory problems, evidence strongly suggests he too died as a result of torture, including medical exams depicting widespread injuries coinciding with torture[524]and the testimony of another victim who said Brindis was being interrogated at the same clandestine torture site as he was.[525]While an investigation into his death was opened by the Tabasco State Prosecutor’s Office, the family told Human Rights Watch no officers had been prosecuted in the case.[526]

In a case documented by the National Human Rights Commission, soldiers arbitrarily detained two civilians—ages 18 and 16—in Tlacotepec, Guerrero, and beat them so severely that the 18-year-olddied.[527] According to the surviving victim and several witnesses, the soldiers stopped the two civilians as they walked along the road and pointed rifles at them. The 18-year-old tried to flee to a nearby home and was caught by soldiers, who handcuffed him and began beating him. According to testimony documented by the commission, “[the soldiers] threw him several times against a concrete wall, picked him up by his feet and neck, and let him drop onto the stairs of the house.” They then transported the victims to a nearby soccer field, where they stripped the 18-year-old, threatened to rape him, and continued punching and kicking both victims, and beating them with their rifle butts. Then the soldiers abandoned the victims. The 16-year-old carried the older victim, who had lost consciousness, to a nearby road, where a car drove them both to a hospital. He died there hours later.

Autopsies conducted by the commission and the state prosecutor’s office both concluded that the 18-year-old had died of a “severe trauma to the head,” which the commission determined was produced by beatings by the soldiers. The commission’s findings were supported by evidence of physical abuse on the bodies of both victims, such as a broken nose and jaw in the victim who died and various hematomas on the body of the other victim. 

Military Justice: Flawed Investigations and Lenient Sentences

Only a small fraction of the cases in which soldiers kill civilians are criminally investigated. That is in part because as a general practice civilian prosecutors defer cases of killings involving soldiers to the military justice system, under the rationale that they may be the result of a breach of military discipline with respect to use of force.

The Mexican Constitution allows for military jurisdiction only for “crimes and faults against military discipline.”[528]This provision makes sense and is consistent with international law, but only so long as breaches of military discipline are not defined so broadly that they include serious criminal acts against civilians, such as extrajudicial executions. However, the Mexican military continues to claim the right to investigate and prosecute killings and other serious human rights violations committed by the military against civilians, relying on a provision of the Code of Military Justice which establishes a very expansive notion of such offenses that includes “faults under common or federal law… when committed by military personnel in active service or in connection with acts of service.”[529]

The use of military jurisdiction to investigate killings committed by soldiers against civilians is supported by the Calderón administration. When President Calderón proposed a reform to the Military Code of Justice in October 2010 that would subject certain types of human rights violations to civilian jurisdiction, the proposal did not include extrajudicial killings—one of several omissions criticized by Human Rights Watch.[530] (At the time of writing the proposal has not been passed.) In a letter to Human Rights Watch, the Interior Ministry’s Subsecretary for Judicial Matters and Human Rights defended the practice of investigating and prosecuting killings in military courts, arguing that homicides committed by the military “cannot be considered outside of the sphere of military discipline.”[531]

While it may be true that all potentially wrongful military killings in some sense can be said to reflect failures of “military discipline,” it in no way follows that Mexican law should or must be interpreted as mandating military jurisdiction in all cases where soldiers are alleged to have wrongfully killed civilians. And while it is true that the use of lethal force by soldiers (as by law enforcement officials) can be legitimate, to argue therefore that any use of lethal force which is not legitimate is a matter of military discipline, represents a profound misunderstanding of the crime of "extrajudicial executions” and also of the state’s obligations with respect to the right to life. 

When a state official carries out an extrajudicial execution, it is by definition never justifiable. In times of war, extrajudicial execution is a war crime. In times of peace, it may be a crime against humanity, if it is a crime carried out as part of a state-sponsored widespread attack against the civilian population.[532] To argue that any killing carried out by the military, regardless of the circumstances, could not be considered an extrajudicial execution is simply incorrect. Yet it is according to this flawed logic that killings of civilians by soldiers continue to be transferred de facto to the military justice system.  

Since 2007, the military prosecutor’s office has opened 89 investigations into killings of civilians—classified in the categories of homicide, manslaughter, and violence against persons resulting in homicide (homicidio, homicidio culposo, and violencia contra las personas causando homicidio)—according to statistics provided by Army in response to a public information request submitted by Human Rights Watch.[533] According to the same response, not a single soldier has been convicted in military jurisdiction for homicide. However, a separate response to a public information request—also sent by SEDENA to Human Rights Watch—noted that two soldiers had been convicted in military jurisdiction for killings of civilians since 2007. According to this response, one soldier was convicted and sentenced to 23 months in prison for “manslaughter”; and another soldier was convicted and sentenced for 9 months in prison for “violence against persons resulting in homicide.”[534]

International law specifies that states should prosecute and punish perpetrators of serious human rights violations with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the offense. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states, “In determining the sentence, the Court shall … take into account such factors as the gravity of the crime and the individual circumstances of the convicted persons.”[535] Furthermore, case law from the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) supports the notion that the penalty should reflect the gravity of the crimes.[536]For example, an ICTR trial chamber indicated that “the penalty must first and foremost be commensurate to the gravity of the offence,” and that “the more heinous the crime, the higher the sentences that should be imposed.”[537]In Mexico, the leniency of sentences imposed in military courts for killing civilians suggests that even in the very rare cases where such crimes are prosecuted, the punishment is inadequate.

Pressure on Victims’ Families to Accept Compensation from the Military in Exchange for Abandoning Investigations

In the more than a dozen cases of likely extrajudicial killings we examined, victims’ families told Human Rights Watch the military had pressured them to agree to abandon efforts to seek criminal investigations into their loved ones’ deaths in exchange for accepting compensation. Family members consistently said they were given little warning by the military in advance of the meetings in which these arrangements were proposed, were not advised in advance of what would be discussed, and were not advised to bring legal representation. Victims’ families said the agreements offered by the military, which were drafted in advance of the meetings without any consultation with the families, contained clauses stipulating that by accepting the payment they would agree not to seek further investigation or compensation, effectively ceding their right to pursue a comprehensive legal remedy. As the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions has noted, reparations do not “absolve States of their responsibility to acknowledge wrongdoing where it has occurred,”[538]or to investigate and prosecute crimes.

Families also said they were told they had to decide whether or not to accept the offers in a short period of time—often on the spot and without legal representation—and told they would not be offered a second chance. Even when they accepted, they were not allowed to keep copies of the agreement. In several cases families said that when they refused the offers, the Army pressured them by calling them repeatedly and visiting their homes and workplaces without warning, and in some cases even meeting with their work colleagues and elected officials, who were urged to press families to reconsider the offers. Families told Human Rights Watch these tactics made them feel they had to accept the offers, and that they would suffer repercussions if they did not.

For example, Bonfilio Rubio Villegas, age 29, was killed on June 20, 2009, in Huamuxtitlán, Guerrero, when soldiers opened fire on the bus on which he was riding. José Rubio Villegas, the victim’s brother, told Human Rights Watch that he first was contacted by the military the day after his brother’s killing.[539]A man who identified himself as a military official called his home and said the Army wanted to help cover the costs of the funeral. José had not met with the military and did not know how they had obtained his number, which made him nervous. He told the officer his family was not interested in money from the military and hung up. The officer called back a second time, urging him to accept the offer. “I told them, I don’t want anything to do with you,” José said. “But they didn’t listen to me.”

Two days later, the victim’s brother said, several plainclothes officers came to his home. They identified themselves as human rights officials, and said they had come to offer compensation on the part of the military. Again, he refused their offer, but they returned three more times in October 2009, and went to the home of his parents with similar offers. In the face of repeated refusals, the Army visited the schools where José and his wife worked. On October 26, the city commissioner in the town where José’s parents live asked them to come to his office. When they arrived, several military officials were waiting there. They offered José’s parents a check for $160,000 pesos, which they refused. The family also told Human Rights Watch they were pressured by state education officials—their employers—as well as municipal police to accept the compensation.

In a complaint filed with the State Human Rights Commission on November 27, 2009, the family requested protection measures in response to “various forms of pressure, threats, and intimidation with the aim of making us accept a check from the Army, and that in this way agree to desist from all efforts to obtain justice for the killing of my brother.”[540] The family wrote: “We are worried by the constant pressure the military has applied through third parties, most recently using the Tlapa municipal police, and we’re afraid that they are not going to stop their zealous efforts to harass and pressure us until we accept the payment… for they have invaded our spheres of work, our family, our community, and now even political circles in our city..”

The Nuevo León State Human Rights Commission told Human Rights Watch it had accompanied Susana Álvarez and Oswaldo Osorio Hernández, whose son had been killed by soldiers in October 2010, in the family’s meeting with Army officials. The Army initially proposed the meeting be held at the military base but the family demanded it be held at the office of the commission. According to the human rights official who participated, Army officials arrived with a written agreement, one of the clauses of which was that by signing the family would cede the right to pursue further investigations in the national or international sphere.[541] The military did not call attention to this clause when it explained the agreement to the family. And the human rights official told Human Rights Watch that had the victim’s family been at the meeting alone, they would have signed it without objection to this condition, effectively relinquishing their right to seek a judicial remedy. The commission’s representative demanded the clause be stricken.

The victim’s mother told Human Rights Watch that remuneration alone was an inadequate remedy, and that the soldiers responsible for killing her son should be investigated and prosecuted. “I think they should conduct the investigation,” she said. “Not only for my son, but for the [soldiers] themselves, so that they can be successful in their mission, so that their mistakes can be decreased, so that their training can be improved. Not only for my son, but for future victims.”[542]

Illustrative Cases

Extrajudicial Execution of Two Civilians, Anáhuac, Nuevo León Husband and wife Rocío Romeli Elías Garza and Juan Carlos Peña Chavarría were killed by soldiers on March 3, 2010, when they were caught in a shootout between soldiers and armed men. Witnesses saw soldiers move the victims’ bodies and plant arms on them. Although the victims’ families said military officers admitted in a private meeting that the victims were unarmed, no soldiers have been charged as a result of either the civilian or military investigations. Meanwhile, the victims’ families struggled to obtain social benefits for the couple’s surviving children.

The Incident

Elías and Peña, both 29, were shot by members of the army on March 3, 2010 in Anáhuac, Nuevo León. Two witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the victims were walking to their car from the factory where they worked at approximately 12:15 p.m. when they were caught in a shootout between the military and armed men.[543] Elías and Peña took shelter from the shooting in their car. Then, two armed men involved in the shootout tried to carjack their vehicle, but under pursuit from soldiers, abandoned the effort and fled. After the assailants had left, Peña jumped out of the car and tried to run to safety, but was shot by the military. He retreated to the car, where he and Elías again took cover. When the shooting stopped, Elías raised her hands and pleaded for help for her husband, yelling that they were civilians and were unarmed. She was shot by a soldier standing approximately 10 feet away, according to witness accounts. Soldiers approached the bodies and shot them again from point-blank range.

Then, the witnesses said, the soldiers moved the bodies and planted arms near both victims.[544]One of the witnesses told Human Rights Watch she approached a soldier and asked why they had killed the unarmed civilians. The soldier responded, “They had to pay. They shot two of my partners.”

A statement released the following day by the military said soldiers had killed eight criminals in a shootout.[545]The Nuevo León state prosecutor’s office informed the press that among the “presumed criminals” killed in the incident was an armed woman who was carrying an ID card from a local factory.[546]

The Investigation

Family members of the victims told Human Rights Watch they learned about the shootout from the TV news, where it was reported to have taken place outside the factory where the couple worked.[547] Unable to reach the couple on their phones, the families went to the police station, the state prosecutor’s office, and other authorities to ask if they had been caught in the shootout, but were given no information. Later that night, they received a call from the mayor of Anáhuac, who informed them that the couple had been killed while allegedly participating in the shootout.

The family members were not allowed to retrieve the victims’ bodies until the following day, when they were given death certificates that said the couple had been killed while participating in an “illegal act.”[548] 

Witnesses and family members said no one from the federal, state, or military prosecutors’ offices came to interview them after the shootout. On May 5, the victims’ families met with the mayor. When they said they wanted to pressure authorities to investigate, the mayor told them, “That it was best we stayed quiet, because we weren’t going to be able to win against [the Army].”[549]

Family members filed a complaint on March 12 with the state prosecutor's office.[550]Approximately one week later, they received a call from the Army requesting that they meet at the Anáhuac mayor’s office. Approximately 30 officers and soldiers arrived at the meeting, including a colonel and a major from the army’s human rights unit, the victims’ family told Human Rights Watch. According to two family members who attended the meeting, the colonel admitted that the couple had been unarmed civilians caught in crossfire, contradicting the military’s initial reports that they were armed participants. But the colonel said the couple had been shot by criminals, not soldiers.

When the family members asked why the military had planted arms on the victims, the colonel said that it was part of the military’s “procedure” to place arms in the hands of bodies near which they appeared. "When we find a body with a weapon near it, we put the two together, and place the arms on the bodies to connect them to the crime,” the colonel said, according to the family members.[551]

In response, the family asked the military to admit publicly that the couple had been civilians. The colonel said they could not, because it would contradict their initial account and harm the reputation of the institution, the family later told Human Rights Watch. The colonel told them they were interested in “agreeing on a settlement” with the family “to avoid problems in the future with the military.” “We don’t want you to damage the Army’s reputation,” the family recalls the colonel saying. The victims’ families said they took this statement as a warning that they would face reprisals if they denounced the Army. The military also asked for their cell phone numbers and addresses, which the family said they provided reluctantly, fearing that the information could be used to locate them and even exact retribution if they continued to seek justice for their relatives. 

The victims’ families said state prosecutors failed to adequately investigate the case.  One family member told Human Rights Watch that when he went to visit the office of the investigator in charge of the case in April 2010, the investigator claimed that she had lost the case file.[552] “The prosecutor’s office has done nothing to investigate,” the family member told Human Rights Watch. “Everything that’s in the case file is there because we’ve put it there.” Witnesses who lived in the homes near where the shootout took place told Human Rights Watch they were never interviewed by state, federal, or military investigators.[553]

On August 9, the state prosecutor's office issued a document stating that Elías and Peña "were victims of a confrontation between personnel from the army and assassins," and that no evidence suggested that the two "belonged to any criminal group or organization, nor have they been identified by anyone as participants in the incident in which they lost their lives."[554]On November 25, 2010, an investigation into possible crimes by soldiers was opened in the military justice system, according to a public information request submitted by a local human rights organization. However, according to information provided on the Army’s website at the time of writing, no officers have yet been charged in the crime.[555] 

Intimidation and Denial of Benefits to Victims’ Children

Two children, ages 8 and 3, were orphaned by the couple’s killing. Beginning in April 2010, family members of the victims sought financial support for the children from the government in the form of social benefits, to which they are entitled, including aid to support their education and the social security payments of their parents. Family members made more than a half dozen trips from Anáhuac to Monterrey to seek this support through various institutions. For months, the family said, authorities denied them the support on the grounds that the victims were criminals, as alleged by military authorities.[556]

In October 2010, vehicles with tinted windows appeared outside the family’s home, victims’ families said.  Several individuals photographed the family members of those killed as they came in and out of the home. The vehicles continued this surveillance and harassment for three days.

More than a year and a half after the killings, both family members and witnesses informed Human Rights Watch that neither civilian nor military investigators had interviewed them and that they had not been told the status of the investigations.

Findings of Violations by the National Human Rights Commission

The National Human Rights Commission conducted an in-depth investigation into the killings, and concluded the Army was responsible for several grave human rights violations including the rights to life, personal safety and integrity, as well as access to justice; and that soldiers were guilty of excessive use of force. The commission affirmed that the victims were not members of organized crime and did not participate in the events leading up to their deaths, as initial military reports had contended. In addition, the commission found that the Army’s account of the incident was not only inaccurate, but that soldiers had manipulated evidence at the crime scene to give the appearance that the victims were armed aggressors.[557] 

According to autopsies conducted by the state prosecutor’s office, Elías sustained 14 gunshot wounds, while Peña sustained six.  Upon examining the autopsies, the commission’s experts found 12 of Elias’s 14 gunshot wounds exhibited burns, which led them to conclude the shots had been fired from less than 70 centimeters away from her body—at point blank range—revealing a clear intent to kill.[558] 

Moreover, the commission found that military officials altered the crime scene by moving the bodies of both victims and planting weapons on them.  This was corroborated by witness testimony given to the commission, and the finding that weapons were placed in the victims’ left hands despite the fact that they were both right-handed.  Evidence of tampering was also found in the military’s report of the incident, reviewed by the commission, which stated that Peña’s identification card had been found in one of the trucks used by the armed assailants, while the state justice officials who later reviewed the crime scene said it was found in the victim’s pocket. Furthemore, soldiers denied civilian justice officials access to the crime scene for over four hours after the incident, claiming jurisdiction over the investigation and giving soldiers time to tamper with evidence.[559]  

On June 15, 2011, the Army agreed to pay reparations for both moral and financial damages to the victims’ families, the commission reported.

Illegal Detention and Extrajudicial Killing of a Civilian, Cárdenas, Tabasco

Summary

Police and soldiers raided the home of Raúl Brindis González on the morning of Novembr 9, 2009— entering forcibly, assaulting the victim in front of his family, and detaining him without an arrest warrant. Brindis’s family immediately inquired with security forces and civil authorities to find out where he was being held, and on what grounds, but all denied having detained him. The next morning, Brindis’s family was told to report to the state prosecutor’s office, where they were told he had died in the custody of the prosecutor’s office that morning of respiratory problems.

Strong evidence suggests Brindis was the victim of an extrajudicial killing while in custody. His family said he was in excellent health when he was detained; a medical exam by the state prosecutor’s office on November 9 documented extensive physical injuries; a forensic examiner told the family his body had been handed over to them on the night of November 9, when authorities claimed Brindis was still alive; and another suspect, who was detained on the same day as Brindis, said he overheard the victim’s name being called for questioning in a facility where he and others were being tortured. Yet authorities maintain Brindis died of natural causes in the custody of the investigative judicial police, and claim he voluntarily confessed beforehand to having worked for an organized crime group. Meanwhile, official investigations into his death have not led to any officials being charged, and state officials have failed to pursue basic inquiries that could help clarify the cicumstances of his death.

Account of the Victim’s Family

At approximately 6 a.m. on November 9, 2009, some 30 police and soldiers raided the home in Cárdenas, Tabasco, where Raúl Brindis Villafuerte and Lydia González Ramírez lived with their son, Raúl Brindis González.[560] Lydia González said the armed men, who wore masks, black shirts, and camouflaged pants—but were not wearing uniforms bearing official insignia—entered the home forcibly without presenting search or arrest warrants. When Raúl Brindis, Sr. asked what they wanted, the men said they were there for his son, whom they did not identify by name. At this point, Raúl Brindis, Jr. emerged from his room, and officers began to beat him without provocation, according to his mother. When his mother pleaded with them to stop, one of the officers pointed his rifle at her and told her to shut up. The victim’s family watched as officers pulled his shirt over his head and dragged him out of the house, where both military vehicles and unmarked cars were waiting. He was loaded into one of the unmarked vehicles and driven off.

The victim’s family immediately went to the federal and state prosecutor’s offices, the military base in Villahermosa, the federal police, as well as local police to inquire if their son was being held, and on what grounds. All of the authorities denied having Raúl Brindis in their custody.

At 8 a.m. on November 10, a state prosecutor visited the Brindis’ home and spoke with the victim’s parents.[561]He told them they should go to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Kidnapping, a sub-unit of the state prosecutor’s office. The official said that they should bring Raúl Brindis' official identification, as well as medicine and a change of clothes. When his mother asked about her son’s condition, the official said he did not know it.

Raúl Brindis's mother went with his partner, Karla, to the prosecutor’s office at approximately 10:30 a.m. After an hour, they were received by Bladimir López Miranda, a prosecutor. “I have bad news,” he said to Brindis's mother, she later told Human Rights Watch. He said her son had died of pneumonia at 6 a.m., two hours before an official had gone to his family’s home to ask them to come to the prosecutor’s office. López Miranda offered to have the body cremated and to transport the remains to the family.

The victim’s mother told the prosecutor her son had been in perfect health when he was detained by security officers the day before, and had never had any respiratory problems. She demanded to know how he had become sick and died in such a short period, and why he had been detained in the first place. The prosecutor was unable to provide any answers. When the family insisted on seeing Brindis's body, prosecutors said they would have to wait.

Testimony Contradicting Official Account of the Victim’s Death

Two pieces of testimony cast doubt on the official account of the causes of Raúl Brindis’s death: one from an official at the morgue, and another from another suspect who was detained that same night.

Raúl Brindis’s family was asked to identify his body at the morgue at 3 p.m. on November 10. When his mother and his partner arrived—González later told Human Rights Watch—an official pulled them aside and told them that Raúl Brindis’s body had actually been delivered on November 9, and not on the morning of November 10, as the official report claimed. The official also told the family that Raúl Brindis’s body was covered in hematomas and skin burns consistent with the application of electric shocks, and that he had suffered a broken nose—injuries excluded from or downplayed in the autopsy report. The official asked the family not to reveal his/her identity, because of safety concerns. The family observed bruises on the body consistent with those described by the official.

In addition, Eliud Naranjo Gómez, who was detained on the same morning as Raúl Brindis, said that he was taken to an off-site detention facility, though he was unsure of where it was located because he was blindfolded on the journey there. Naranjo Gómez told Human Rights Watch that, at that location, he was subjected to a broad range of torture techniques in order to force him to sign a false confession.[562] He said that, between interrogation sessions, he overheard one of the security officers call out for Raúl Brindis—a man he did not know. He heard another officer say, “He’s that one there,” and then heard a man being taken out of the room for interrogation. This account suggests Raúl Brindis was being held in the same facility, and may have been subjected to the same torture techniques as Naranjo Gómez, which included asphyxiation with a plastic bag, electric shocks, beatings, and simulated drowning.[563]

The Authorities’ Account

According to police records, an order was issued for Raul Brindis to appear for questioning at the prosecutor’s office at 4:30 p.m. on November 8.[564]Police reports allege the victim was detained peacefully at his home on November 9, that he offered no resistance,[565]and was handed over to the state prosecutor’s office at 11 a.m.[566]

At approximately 1 p.m. on November 9, the police claim, the victim rendered voluntary testimony, co-signed by a prosecutor and a public defender, in which he immediately confessed to working for an organized crime group.[567] His confession states: “I was arrested the moment they arrived at my home…by police and soldiers, and I handed myself over voluntarily since I knew they were looking for me because I belong to the Gulf Cartel or the Zetas, for whom I am a lookout.” The victim’s brother told Human Rights Watch the signature that appears on the confession does not correspond to Raúl Brindis’s.[568]

Then Tabasco Attorney General, Rafael González Lastra, gave a press conference on November 11, stating the victim died at approximately 6 a.m. on November 10 due to pneumonia in the custody of the investigative judicial police.[569]González Lastra told the press that at the time of his arrest the victim “presented symptoms of pneumonia which, while in jail, developed and caused his death.” The Attorney General also said the victim had been detained in January 2008 for illegally possessing a weapon reserved for the military, suggesting Brindis had a pattern of criminal activity. However, the victim’s family told Human Rights Watch that while he had been accused of having a weapon, he had never been prosecuted for it.[570] 

Medical Examinations

According to a medical exam conducted by experts from the state prosecutor’s office at 11:30 p.m. on November 9—when Brindis was still alive—the victim exhibited a number of contusions and markings.[571] Bruises and marks were found on his neck, right arm, and chest, as well as bruising on his wrists and ankles described as “compatible with friction,”[572]suggesting his extremities may have been constrained during interrogation. Among many injuries noted in the exam were:

1.- Area of epidermic injury of irregular formation of violet color…located in the right upper clavicle region, produced by a contusion.

2. Area of bruising of irregular formation…located on the outter upper right arm, produced by a contusion.

3. Areas of bruising of irregular formations, localized on the chest on both sides of the sternum, compatible with a contusion.

4. Presence of skin excoriation and bruising of a circular formation, around both wrists, compatible with friction.

5. Epidermic bruising and excoriation of semi-circular formations, located on the fronts of both thighs, as well as the right ankle bone and the back of the left foot, compatible with friction.

Despite the various physical injuries noted, the medical exam did not lead experts or prosecutors to inquire further about how the injuries had been sustained.

At 7:20 a.m. on November 10, after the victim had died, the state prosecutor’s office ordered an autopsy to determine the cause of the victim’s death. The order—which was issued by the same official charged with investigating Raúl Brindis—noted that the body exhibited “signs of recent traumatic injuries.”[573] The autopsy report confirmed many of the bruises identified by the state prosecutor’s office’s previous medical exam,[574]and concluded that the cause of death was “acute respiratory failure.” However, like the medical examiners before them, the forensic examiners did not raise questions on the form as to what may have caused the victim’s inability to breathe.

Investigations

Raúl Brindis’ relatives told Human Rights Watch that they filed a formal complaint with the state prosecutor’s office on November 11. They said the state prosecutor’s office has opened both a criminal investigation and an internal affairs inquiry into the events surrounding the death, but that there had been no progress.[575] For example, Brindis’s brother said that, when the family inquired about the progress of the investigation in July 2011, more than a year and a half after his death, officials told him they were still trying to confirm the names of the officers involved in Brindis’s arrest, so that they could interview them. Nor have investigators in either case interviewed the victim’s family. Asked if he had confidence in the investigators in either case, Brindis’s brother said, “It is very clear: nothing is going to come of it. They’re only running us in circles until we get tired of asking.”[576]

The family filed a formal complaint before the Tabasco State Human Rights Commission on November 12, 2009. The complaint led only to a statement calling for an administrative investigation into the events surrounding Brindis’s death, the family said. The commission confirmed that it had issued a “Reconciliation Agreement” (Propuesta de Conciliación) on August 16, 2010 to the state prosecutor’s office, but offered no explanation as to why it had not investigated the case further, given the seriousness of the charges and the fact that the family had filed a formal complaint.[577]The family said that, despite its requests, it had been denied a copy of the reconciliation agreement.

Brindis is survived by his partner, Karla, and his two young children, one of whom was born after his death. They and his parents, who were also his dependents, have difficulty subsisting on Brindis’s social security benefits. They have received no reparations from the state as a consequence of his death, they told Human Rights Watch.

Extrajudicial Killing of a Civilian, Huamuxtitlán, Guerrero

Summary

On June 20, 2009, a civilian was killed in Huamuxtitlán, Guerrero, when soldiers opened fire on the bus in which he was traveling. The military offered contradictory accounts in the immediate aftermath of the incident that appeared to amount to a denial of responsibility for the death. A subsequent investigation by the National Human Rights Commission found the military killed the civilian as a result of use of excessive force, which also put other passengers’ lives at risk.

The victim’s family filed a formal request with the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office that the case not be transferred to military jurisdiction. Nevertheless, civilian prosecutors transferred the investigation to the military prosecutor’s office. In August 2009, a soldier was charged in the case, but more than two years later, the military’s investigation remains ongoing, and the family has no information about its progress. Meanwhile, the family has been subject to persistent harassment from military and civilian authorities to accept a monetary payment as compensation for the death, and in exchange for not pursuing criminal proceedings against those responsible.[578]  

The Incident

At 10:30 p.m. on June 20, 2009, soldiers from the Army’s 93rd Infantry Battalion stopped a bus at a checkpoint in Huamuxtitlán, Guerrero. Soldiers ordered passengers to disembark from the bus and searched them. One passenger, Fausto Saavedrea Valera, was detained for wearing boots issued by the military, an act which allegedly constituted “unlawful use of official uniforms and medals,” while the rest of the passengers were allowed to get back on the bus.

The bus driver insisted that the soldiers write in his log book that they had detained one of his passengers, which set off an argument. According to the investigation later conducted by the commission, it is here that accounts diverge: the driver said that after soldiers signed the log, he was given permission to depart; while soldiers said they told him to wait. Then, the bus started to drive off and the soldiers opened fire. Passenger Bonfilio Rubio Villegas, 29, who was seated at the back of the bus, was struck in the back of the neck by a bullet and killed.

Conflicting Military Accounts

The Army offered contradictory accounts in the immediate aftermath of the incident. In an initial account given to the press, the military said that the bus had refused to stop at a checkpoint, causing soldiers to fire warning shots into the air and then pursue the bus in their vehicles. The military claimed that when they caught up with the bus 10 minutes later, they detained the driver and found a passenger had been shot. They also alleged they found 10 kilos of marijuana on the bus.[579]

However, when questioned by state judicial investigative police on the night of the shooting, four soldiers acknowledged that the driver had initially stopped at the checkpoint, and that they had fired on the bus, rather than into the air.[580] Furthermore, judicial investigative police who inspected the bus before the military conducted its review of the crime scene did not find any drugs, nor did soldiers turn up anything in their initial search of the bus, raising suspicions that the drugs were later planted by the military.

The Investigation

On June 20, 2009 the Zaragoza Judicial District Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into the incident.[581] On July 16, 2009, the Guerrero State Attorney General’s Special Human Rights Prosecutor opened an investigation into the incident. The victim’s brother, José Rubio Villegas, filed a formal request with the special prosecutor’s office asking that it not transfer the case to military courts. Nevertheless, on September 29, 2009, the special prosecutor handed jurisdiction over to the military prosecutor’s office.[582] 

Rubio Villegas’s family filed a complaint with the Guerrero State Human Rights Commission, which handed the investigation over to the National Human Rights Commission on November 27, due to the involvement of federal security forces. Shortly thereafter, the national commission opened an investigation into the case.

The commission issued its findings on February 25, 2011, concluding that the soldiers had used excessive force in the incident, in violation of the passengers’ rights to life, well being, and personal security, which resulted in the unlawful killing of Rubio Villegas. The soldiers, the commission wrote, “placed the people traveling on the bus in grave danger when they shot their firearms at a vehicle full of passengers, which they had already inspected and, as a result, had reason to know that several passengers were onboard, and whose lives, well being, and security they put at risk.”[583]The Army accepted the commission’s recommendation on March 17, 2011, and agreed to open an investigation into the incident.[584]

 The military’s investigation led to the filing of criminal charges against one soldier for “manslaughter” on August 15, 2009.[585] But according to information provided by the Army at the time of writing, more than two years after the soldier was charged, the case is still being investigated. Rubio Villegas’s family told Human Rights Watch they had no information on the status of the investigation, and no access to the prosecutors in the military justice system.

Challenging the Use of Military Jurisdiction

On February 11, 2011 and May 2, 2011 Rubio Villegas’s family submitted requests to the Guerrero State Attorney General for an update on the progress of the investigations. The family received a response on May 31, 2011 informing them that the investigation had been transferred to military jurisdiction almost two years earlier—on July 7, 2009—on the grounds that civilian prosecutors lacked competence to investigate the case. In response, the family filed an amparo on June 22, 2011 challenging the prosecutor’s office’s decision to transfer the case to military jurisdiction, arguing that it violated the Mexican Constitution and international treaties.[586]

In a July 28, 2011 report, the sixth military judge defended the use of military jurisdiction in the case, arguing that the alleged offense constituted “a crime against military discipline…considering that it was committed by a soldier in the Mexican Army while carrying out acts of military service.” Rubio Villegas’s family later learned that one soldier was being tried for the killing, for the charge of manslaughter rather than homicide.[587] At the time of writing, the family was still awaiting a response to the amparo filed.[588]

Harassment of the Victim’s Family

Rubio Villegas’s family learned about the incident from the local news on the morning of June 21, and several members immediately set out for the state prosecutor’s office in Huamuxtitlán to learn if Rubio Villegas had been hurt. Family members told Human Rights Watch that after they had given their names, they were made to wait more than five hours before being attended to by someone. When they eventually met with state prosecutors, the victim’s brother said, the meeting resembled an interrogation, with the investigator asking him where his brother had been traveling and why.

The victim’s family members said that in the weeks and months following the killing, members of the Army repeatedly telephoned their homes and visited in person to put pressure on them to accept compensation for Rubio Villegas’s death, in lieu of pursuing criminal charges.[589] When the family members refused the offers, plainclothes officers from the Army visited their workplaces and had civilian authorities—including the city commissioner and investigative judicial police—put pressure on the family, as a result of which the family filed a formal complaint requesting protection from harassment and intimidation.[590]In the complaint, the family said, “We are worried by the constant pressure the military has applied through third parties, most recently using the Tlapa municipal police, and we’re afraid that they are not going to stop their zealous efforts to harass and pressure us until we accept the payment…for they have invaded our spheres of work, our family, our community, and now even political circles in our city.”

Torture and Extrajudicial Execution of a Civilian, Santa Catarina, Nuevo León

On March 21, 2010, municipal police in Santa Catarina, Nuevo León, were attacked by armed men as they transported two detainees. The Navy intervened to support the police and repelled the attack; troops then loaded the two detainees, the chief of police, and a wounded officer onto a military helicopter. The body of one of the detainees, with signs of torture, was found dumped in an empty lot the following day. The Navy and the municipal chief of police offered conflicting accounts of what had happened to the detainees and in whose custody they remained after the helicopter ride.

On June 7, 2011, the National Human Rights Commission released a report finding that security forces had likely participated in the torture and killing of one civilian, as well as the arbitrary detention and cruel treatment of the other. The commission also found those responsible had planted evidence on the victim’s body to give the appearance that he had died in a drug-related dispute.

The Incident

At approximately 11 a.m. on March 21, 2010, a group of police in Santa Catarina allegedly detained two men for criminal acts. Accompanied by Police Chief Eduardo Murrieta, municipal officers were transporting the two men when, at 1:30 pm, they were intercepted by a group of armed men and a shootout ensued, according to police accounts. Two of Murrieta’s bodyguards were killed, while a police officer and one of the detainees were wounded. Navy troops arrived to provide back-up for the police and repelled the attack, according to accounts by the Navy and municipal police.

At approximately 2:30 p.m., a Navy helicopter arrived to transport the two detainees, together with Murrieta and the wounded police officer, to a nearby hospital.[591] News photographers captured images of the detainees as they were being loaded onto the helicopter by the Navy.[592]

The following day, the body of one of the detainees—later identified as José Humberto Márquez Compeán, age 26—was found with signs of torture in an empty lot outside the municipality of San Nicolás. Drugs were found atop his body, which was wrapped in a sheet.

On March 24, the family of the second detainee, Lucio Barajas, went to the Nuevo León State Human Rights Commission to report that he was missing. The commission informed Human Rights Watch that family members withdrew their complaint that afternoon, after receiving a phone call that Barajas had been released. According to the commission, the family said they feared reprisals by the Navy.[593]

Chief of Police Murrieta resigned from his job on April 30. [594]

Conflicting Accounts and Investigation

The Navy and municipal police gave conflicting accounts of what happened to the two detainees in the period between when they were placed on the Navy helicopter on March 21 and the appearance of Marquez’s body on March 22. According to public statements by the Navy, “the support provided by this institution consisted only of the transfer of the wounded and the detained, who were at all times in the custody of Eduardo Murrieta, police chief of Santa Catarina, until their arrival at the university hospital for the medical treatment of the wounded and the continuation of the investigations concerning the detained.” [595] However, Police Chief Murrieta said that he, the two detainees, and the wounded officer had been flown to the hospital by the Navy, where he was given medical attention and separated from the detainees, who allegedly remained in the hands of the Navy. [596]

The National Human Rights Commission Investigation

The National Human Rights Commission, which opened an investigation into the incident on March 24,[597]and requested protection measures for Lucio Barajas on March 25,[598]eventually concluded that neither the Navy nor police account was accurate. On June 7, 2011, the commission released a report finding that the Navy and police had likely participated in the torture and killing of one detainee, as well as the arbitrary detention and cruel treatment of the other.[599]

The commission rejected the Navy’s claim that the two detainees were in Murrieta’s custody throughout the process. Citing coverage from the media and closed circuit cameras at the hospital, as well as testimony from the surviving civilian detainee, Police Chief Murrieta, and hospital officials, the commission determined that the detainees were in the Navy’s custody beginning when they were placed on the Navy helicopter.

The commission also found that, contrary to its accounts, the Navy never handed over the two detainees to hospital officials. Rather, when the military helicopter arrived at the hospital, only Barajas, Murrieta, and the wounded officer were taken off; Márquez was not. Murrieta and the wounded officer were taken to the hospital for treatment, while Barajas was held in the parking lot. The helicopter took off again with Márquez aboard, and returned roughly an hour and a half later without him. At that time, Barajas, Murrieta, and the officer were again loaded onto the helicopter, and taken to the Navy base in San Nicolás. Hospital officials concurred that neither detainee was ever treated in the hospital.

The commission found Márquez had been subjected to torture before his death, citing an autopsy by the state prosecutor’s office that determined the cause of death was “a profound cranial contusion.” In a forensic exam conducted jointly by a military medical expert and a commission specialist in internal medicine concluded that Márquez:

…suffered multiple traumas with diverse instruments; prolonged asphyxiation via an obstruction of the upper airways; mixed cardiogenic and distributive shock, secondary to stress and multiple trauma; cerebral swelling secondary to acute asphyxiation… acute dysfunction of multiple organs secondary to asphyxiation; and provoked death, as well injuries that are unique to subjects who have suffered torture.[600]

The commission concluded that: “it can be established that this is a case of enforced disappearance,” which was “very likely” perpetrated by Navy officers and the police.

As evidence, the commission pointed out that Márquez had last been seen, hours before his death, in the Navy’s custody; that the Navy and police had deliberately lied in their accounts of the incident; that the victim’s body was found only 3 kilometers from the Navy base in San Nicolás; and that the presence of drugs on the victim’s body suggested perpetrators had tried to cover up his death. As the commission wrote, this “seems to indicate that the perpetrators of [Márquez’s] death were trying to leave signs that it was just another homicide connected to the drug trade.”[601]

The Navy accepted the commission’s recommendation on June 16, 2011, and the military prosecutor’s office, federal prosecutors, and state prosecutors all have ongoing investigations in the case.[602]The Navy has made public no details on the progress of its investigation into the case on the section of its website that provides information of investigations tied to recommendations issued by the National Human Rights Commission.[603]

Arbitrary Detention and Extrajudicial Killing of a Civilian, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua

Arbitrary Detention and Disappearance

At 12:30 p.m. on August 26, 2010, Arnulfo Antunez Sandoval, age 37, was driving with his wife, Esperanza Gómez García, and his two children in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, when their car was pulled over by federal police. According to a complaint filed by Gómez with the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission, the officers “opened the driver’s side door and yanked my husband out of the pick up in a bad way.” She said he offered no resistance, and officers placed him in a police car.[604]Gómez followed the several police cars as they drove to the home where she and her husband lived with their children. She watched as officers entered the house, searched it without a warrant, and “tore the place apart,” confiscating the registration for the family’s pick-up truck.[605] The police then drove off with her husband and the documents.

Gómez immediately went to various federal and state police stations, prosecutors’ offices, and other authorities to ask about her husband’s whereabouts, but all denied having detained him or having any knowledge of where he was being held. She filed a complaint with the state human rights commission.[606]The following day, she registered a complaint with the federal prosecutor’s office in which she provided the identification numbers of the federal police units involved in the arrest.[607]

Discovery of the Body

At approximately 12 pm on August 27, two bodies were found in an abandoned house in Ciudad Juárez, one of which was later identified as Antunez. No identification was found on either of the bodies. Abandoned syringes located around the bodies led the investigative judicial police who arrived at the scene to hypothesize in their initial report that the victims had been drug users who died of overdoses.[608]

However, a forensic examiner’s report on Antunez’s body determined his cause of death was hemorrhaging to the brain caused by a blunt strike. “The application of an external force to the skull provoked a fracture… caused the damage and destruction of the central nervous system, with the subsequent loss of vital functions that control the body, which resulted in death,” the examiner concluded.[609]The examiner noted that the body also showed other bruises from a beating. Gómez identified her husband’s body on August 30, four days after he had been detained by federal police officers.

The Investigation

Despite the fact that the victim’s wife had filed a complaint and provided the identification numbers of the two federal police cars carrying the officers involved in the detention, federal prosecutors did little to investigate the officers involved in the case, according to the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission’s special representative for attending to victims in Ciuadad Juárez, Gustavo de la Rosa. As a result, on September 9, de la Rosa requested the names of the federal police agents who belonged to the car units identified by the victim’s wife. The Federal Police provided the names to de la Rosa on September 15, and he in turn passed them along to state and federal prosecutors.[610]

According to de la Rosa, three separate investigations into the incident were opened: one in the federal police’s internal affairs department, one in the state prosecutor’s office, and one in the federal prosecutor’s office.[611] In a meeting in September 2010, state prosecutors informed Human Rights Watch that they had sought to interview the officers named by the federal police. But they said when they inquired with Federal Police officials, they were informed that the officers had been moved to another state.[612] At the time of writing, none of the investigations had led to charges against federal police officers. According to de la Rosa, the three investigative bodies are not collaborating or sharing information. “Each one is doing his own investigation,” he said, none of which has made any progress.[613] 

Extrajudicial Killing of Two Civilians, Monterrey, Nuevo León

Summary

On March 19, 2010, two students were killed as they walked out of a university in Monterrey, Nuevo León.  Initial press releases and internal reports by the Army claimed the students were “hitmen” who had been killed after opening fire on soldiers, but the military later revised its story, claiming the civilians had been killed in a shootout between armed men and soldiers. However, evidence documented by prosecutors, forensic examiners, and the National Human Rights Commission raises serious questions about the Army’s account. For instance, the commission concluded that the military planted weapons on the victims’ bodies and prevented civilian investigators from accessing the crime scene for several hours. While some of the victims’ gunshot wounds were initially attributed to organized crime, an autopsy revealed one student’s gunshot wounds were inflicted at point blank range, pointing to the likelihood of an extrajudicial execution.

Civilian and military prosecutors opened investigations into the civilians’ deaths, but neither has led to soldiers being charged with offenses related to the killings, though one soldier has been charged with tampering with the evidence. Meanwhile, the victims’ families said they have received little information from authorities about the ongoing investigations.

The Incident and Conflicting Military Accounts

At approximately midnight on March 19, 2010, an Army convoy was carrying out a patrol in Monterrey, Nuevo León, when it engaged in a shootout with armed criminals. The military offered conflicting accounts of how the confrontation began. In a March 19 press release, the military said it was tipped off about a group of armed men in vehicles and, upon arriving at the reported location, “various vehicles carrying armed men, upon noticing the presence of the Army, attacked the soldiers by shooting at them.”[614]

However, in an April 5 Army report on the incident, the soldiers involved said a truck passed a military vehicle in the patrol and, “began to zigzag…which led us to follow the vehicle, requesting it stop by signaling with headlights.”[615] According to this account, armed men in the car then opened fire on the soldiers, and a firefight ensued, which continued until both vehicles were incapacitated by gunfire. Various vehicles then arrived to support the armed men, the military said. Two men in the truck fled the disabled vehicle and jumped into a pick-up truck “with the characteristics of a state police vehicle,” which sped away. Then, two additional armed men emerged from the disabled truck who, according to the military, “it is now known were named Javier Francisco Arredondo Verdugo and Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso, who began to run toward the entrance of the Monterrey Institute of Technology… where they fell dead after being wounded in the shootout.”

National Human Rights Commission Findings of Violations

After an exhaustive investigation, the National Human Rights Commission released a report on the incident on August 12, 2010, finding that the military had committed serious human rights violations, including “the arbitrary use of force, cruel and inhuman treatment, tampering with the scene of the crime and unfounded accusations,” and other abuses.[616]

The commission found that Arredondo Verdugo and Mercado Alonso were not armed men and did not come from any of the vehicles that had allegedly opened fire on the Army convoy, but rather were graduate students who had left the university as the shootout was taking place. Video footage from campus security cameras showed the two walking out of the gates of the university at 12:49 am, and then running back through the same entrance at 12:55. Nonetheless, in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the state prosecutor’s office told university officials of the victims, “I assure you 100% that they were not students.”[617]

A forensic examination conducted by the state prosecutor’s office, which was cited in the commission’s report, found that Alonso had sustained six bullet wounds, two of which “revealed an ‘inlay of dust particles,’ which in evidentiary terms indicates that several shots could have been fired point-blank at a distance of less than one meter,” suggesting he was shot at close range, execution-style. Furthermore, both bodies showed evidence of bruising that, according to the commission, was caused by “the rupture of blood vessels resulting from a forceful hit, which can only be produced when the person was alive at the time the hits were sustained.” In the words of the commission’s medical examiner, this suggested “with a high degree of probability that after having sustained gunshot wounds, bruises were inflicted to the the victims’ faces.” 

Initial reports by the state prosecutor’s medical examiner stated that both bodies were found with firearms. However, the commission investigation concluded that the arms found on the victims were the same ones the military had reported finding in the vehicle disabled in the shootout, suggesting that they had been planted on the victims by soldiers. According to the military, neither student was found with any identification, despite the fact that they would have needed their student IDs to enter the campus. Also missing from the crime scene was the backpack one of the students was shown carrying in security footage. It was never recovered.

Roughly an hour after the end of the alleged shootout, the commission reported, the military destroyed the security camera in the entry gate of the university. Investigators from the state prosecutor’s office handed over ballistic evidence collected at the scene of the crime to military personnel, rather than holding onto it for their own investigation.

The commission also reported that military, federal, and state prosecutors’ offices all failed to cooperate with the commission’s investigation, hindering its ability to determine who was responsible for the victims’ deaths. In particular, the commission said, the federal prosecutor’s office refused to share key evidence in its investigation, arguing that the information was “confidential.” On May 1, 2010, however, the federal prosecutor’s office held a press conference in which it revealed significant evidence and initial conclusions in its ongoing investigation, including some of the information it had denied the commission.

On August 27, the Army accepted the recommendation of the commission. [618]

Civilian and Military Investigations

On March 19, both the military and state prosecutors’ offices opened investigations into the incident. On March 22, the state prosecutor’s office handed jurisdiction in the investigation over to federal prosecutors, on account of the involvement of the Army.[619]

On May 1, as noted above, the federal prosecutor’s office presented the initial findings of its investigation in a press conference. Among other findings, it concluded that the two students were killed in crossfire during a shootout between the military and “members of the organized crime.”[620] It concluded that at least one of the bullets that had killed Alonso pertained to a caliber of weapon used by organized crime, and not the military. They gave no information regarding the nature of the other 12 bullets wounds inflicted on the two bodies.[621] Federal prosecutors also said any information relating to possible manipulation of the crime scene by soldiers would be handed over to military prosecutors. The federal prosecutor’s has provided no additional public updates on the investigation’s progress since that time.

According to the Army, on July 19, 2010 military prosecutors charged one officer for manipulating the crime scene in the immediate aftermath of the killings.[622] According to the information provided on the Army’s website at the time of writing, this is the only officer under investigation in the case.[623]

Arredondo’s parents said civilian and military officials’ contact with the family has been limited and erratic. They told Human Rights Watch that federal prosecutors have never interviewed them in connection with the case and have not kept them informed about progress in the investigation. For example, families said they received a telephone call only two hours in advance of the May 1, 2010 press conference held by federal prosecutors to provide information on progress of the investigation—from then-Minister of the Interior Fernando Francisco Gómez-Mont Urueta—telling them to “be ready” for some news in the case.[624]Arredondo’s parents said they have met repeatedly with the Army, but that the military’s investigation had made no progress—a process they described as “wearing you down.” Said Arredondo’s father, “They think that as time passes, we’ll forget what happened. We can’t. For us, it’s like it was yesterday. And we can’t resolve this until they admit they made a mistake—and are punished for it.” The family said they had virtually no contact with the National Human Rights Commission since it had issued its recommendation.

Targeted Recommendations to Address Extrajudicial Killings

To Federal and State Prosecutors:

• Conduct thorough, impartial investigations into all cases where civilian deaths are attributable to agents of the state, including those documented in this report.  All relevant evidence should be secured promptly, including identification of possible eyewitness to be interviewed and physical evidence. Gunshot residue tests should be one of the forensic exams conducted on victims to determine if shots were fired at point blank range.
• Create protocols for investigating all deaths which are alleged to have occurred as a result of shootouts between security forces and armed individuals and for all deaths in custody.
• Accounts of events as provided by soldiers, police and other officials should not be automatically accorded more weight than accounts of other witnesses. All official accounts should be assessed for credibility and reliability and compared to statements of other witnesses, physical evidence from the crime scene, and other forensic evidence.
• No conclusions should be reached on the legality of a killing on the basis of an official account without undertaking basic investigative steps to determine how victims were killed and whether the use of force by public officials was justified and proportionate. 
• Do not transfer cases to military jurisdiction where evidence suggests that a civilian has been the victim of an extrajudicial killing committed by members of the Armed Forces.

To the Armed Forces and Police:

• Issues instructions that lethal force should only be used as a last resort, when it is proportionate to the threat posed.
• In the event of the death or wounding of a civilian for example in the context of a shootout or accidental killing, do not interfere in any way with the scene of the event. Soldiers and police should not collect evidence such as bullet casings, and their duties should be limited to preserving the scene of the event until civilian investigators arrive.
• Immediately notify civilian prosecutors of shootouts and other confrontations, and grant full access to crime scenes to civilian investigators. Cooperate fully with civilian prosecutors’ investigations, including making officers involved in incidents available for interviews.
• Do not transfer officers implicated in an investigation into killings to other geographical regions until the inquiry into the related incident has been resolved. 
• All officers under investigation for possibly unlawful killings should not be permitted to be involved in operations that might require the use of force against civilians until the investigation demonstrates the lawfulness of the killing under review.
• Ensure that all soldiers and police officers on security checkpoints in civilian areas are trained in how to administer checkpoints. This is particularly important in relation to soldiers who may not be otherwise be trained in appropriate standards involved in law enforcement with civilians. Develop a clear protocol for when it is appropriate to stop vehicles, as well as when it is acceptable to open fire on vehicles, in accordance with international standards governing the use of force.
• Do not pressure families of victims of executions or other killings to sign agreements with the Army forfeiting their right to seek criminal prosecutions or administrative investigations into the killings in exchange for compensation. Declare null and void all previous agreements to this effect, and make all such agreements public.

To the Federal Government:

• Homocide victims should not be refered to as criminals unless and until a full and impartial investigation has been conducted, upon which that allegation can be based, or until criminal responsibility has been determined by a judicial process.
• In the national database on homicides tied to organized crime, include information on the number of executions for which investigations have been opened, and of those investigations, the number of cases that have resulted in suspects being prosecuted and/or convicted.
• In deaths from “attacks” and “assaults and confrontations” included in the database—which imply a confrontation between security forces and alleged criminals—provide information regarding whether investigations have been opened into the actions of state officials and the results of those investigations.

To the National Congress:

• Approve a national law regulating the use of force by all security forces, including the Armed Forces, and federal, state, and local police, based on internationally recognized standards.
• Reform the federal law on organized crime to explicitly include homicide as one of the crimes that may be connected to organized crime, which will allow federal prosecutors to claim, and federal judges to grant, federal civilian jurisdiction in cases of killings allegedly tied to organized crime.