JUSTICE MEXICAN STYLE: 'FUCKING KILL HIM'

Nuevo Laredo Tamaulipas chase and clash: "He's alive! Kill him!" Miltary orders a "civilian" kill 

 

By  Chivis Martinez from El Universal

 

Borderland Beat

August 24, 2020

 

In the early morning of July 3, soldiers fired hundreds of times with long weapons and at close range, at a truck where members of organized crime were allegedly traveling, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

The official version indicated that after the ceasefire there was no one with vital signs and that is how 12 people were found dead after a confrontation, but a video held by El Universal reveals otherwise. In the video it is seen that a person moves in the box of the pickup that has just received at least 243 shots. There are bodies next to him. In front of him are five Mexican soldiers pointing weapons at him.

The military yells, "He's alive!" and a military man orders, "fucking kill him”.

An element of the Mexican army wears a camera attached to his helmet, as part of the urban operations protocol. He is in front of a machine gun that is mounted on a Cheyene pickup. Shooting  head-on aiming at a silver pickup truck. He runs out of bullets and asks for more ammunition. This he repeats four times. Has trouble charging while in pursuit.

Before this, four official vehicles carried out motorized reconnaissance on the street A. Valdez Reyna of the Nueva Era neighborhood, when leaving towards the Airport highway heading north, they were attacked with firearms by members of organized crime, reveals the report approved police station to which El Universal had access.

They were three pick-up trucks that were carrying armed people. The army repelled the aggression and followed them up. Later, two of those three vans would make a U-turn and fire at the military, leaving one vehicle immobilized. The other military vehicles followed the silver While the soldier is loading his machine gun, an armored army vehicle, Sancat models, hits the silver pick-up from behind and causes it to lose control, cross the median and stay in the opposite direction and on the opposite side of the road.

In all of this, it is not seen that the people of the pursued pick-up shoot at the army, a soldier declared that he used 27 cartridges in the event, another more at least 70 shots.

On the other side of the road a person tries to open a door but does not open. Two people emerge from the driver’s side and are killed meters ahead. Since the coup, the army does not stop shooting at the truck. 

Now two more army vehicles arrive, a Cheyenne with a machine gun and another Sancat, and they fire at close range. The amount of impacts is such that part of the box of the pickup ignites in flames.

Two other army vehicles arrive, another Cheyenne and another Sancat, join the shooting.

At this time, a military man already asked for a ceasefire. This lasts only a second when the elements fire again.

You hear on the radio that they ask for medical. And soldiers who are already on foot approach those who ran away and were shot and they shoot  them again at close range.

A soldier approaches all the vehicles to ask if they are all okay. They answer yes. In the report, they state that the vehicles received 9, 7 and 7 shots, no casualties.

More military are surrounding the truck. They carry lamps and weapons. Five come to see the box of the pickup, someone moves. They order to kill him, there the video cuts. The video has a duration of 4:16 minutes.

The alleged criminals

On July 14, 11 days after the events, El Universal revealed that, in the confrontation with alleged criminals, there were also three civilians who were kidnapped by members of organized crime. There were three young people: one, a migrant from Chiapas; another, a university student, and the third that is still without information. These three people were included among the 12 alleged criminals that members of the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) claim to have killed, without registering any casualties.

These people were kidnapped, their hands and feet were tied. Two of them received a bullet impact in the thorax, from top to bottom, and the third died of a gunshot to the skull, shot from one to three meters away.

Unlike the other bodies, these three only had a bullet impacts. Photographs in the possession of this newspaper reveal how the bodies present large amounts of shots.

On that date, the Sedena, when questioned by El Universal, explained that "At the time the event ends, the aggression, if there are no people who can receive medical attention, the FGR is informed," and they did so, they reported that no one had vital signs.

The relatives of the victims filed complaints against the Sedena before the Attorney General's Office for the crime of intentional homicide, one week after the events.

The Sedena, consulted in this regard, explained that the procedure is that if there is a crime they investigate and punish. “If someone commits a crime. There is no impunity here. There is no overlap with anyone. On all occasions in which it has been determined through an investigation that there is the responsibility of military personnel, the institution has always investigated and if there is responsibility, it has proceeded. It is something that has always been done. It is not new".

The use of cameras

As seen in the video, there are signs that at least one person is alive. This video is part of a complete version that the military authorities have.

The Manual for the Use of Force of common application to the Three Armed Forces, issued during the previous administration by the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy, published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on May 30, 2014, provided for the use of of cameras in operations to document incidents and interactions with the civilian population and to have evidence that the actions of the armed forces personnel respect human rights. Already in this six-year term, the National Law on the Use of Force approved by the Congress of the Union and published in the DOF in May 2019, provided in its article 30 section XI the following: “It is legal to record or film the development of the operation , from the beginning to the end of it. "

From 2010 to date, based on the recommendations of the CNDH, the pattern of action of the Armed Forces has been shown to alter the evidence when they commit human rights violations, documenting at least seven cases, six against Sedena and one against Sedena. more against Semar.

For Santiago Aguirre, director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), these events confirm the risks of the decision to deepen the militarization of security, which was first made clear with the creation of the National Guard, which is only civil in the letter, and later in the Presidential Agreement published on May 11, 2020 that would give permission to the military to have police duties.

“For this reason, by maintaining the military deployment without effective controls and by tolerating that the systematic military cover-up of human rights violations continues, one could undoubtedly speak of complicity and this could be affirmed to a greater extent if after the revelation of the full video they are not the perpetrators brought before the civil justice”.

In Mexico, it has been documented that in the military sphere that there have been explicit written orders that instruct military personnel in conduct contrary to human rights. This was proven by the Prodh Center in the Tlatlaya case, which occurred in 2014.

Additionally, journalistic investigations such as the “Chain of Command” project have documented that in the military bodies that are present in the states with the greatest violence, what the troops receive as The instruction of certain commanders on the use of force is often a set of verbal orders with implicit or understood content on the possibility of using means not compatible with human rights, including extrajudicial executions, Aguirre explains.

For José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas Division of Human Right Watch, this fact is alarming, “consistent with the patterns of conduct that we have documented by the armed forces for decades. How many of the more than 70,000 Mexicans who have disappeared since 2006 have died in this way? We do not know. What we do know for sure is that President López Obrador may have ended the policy of sending the army to patrol the streets. But instead, it has given more responsibility than ever to the military."