Wow! This piece by Ricardo Ravelo in Proceso really underscores the waste of funds and likely harmful impacts of the proposed U.S. Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico). The second round of funds is currently being pushed for this failed drug war policy. Let’s hope President-elect Obama comes up with practical, non-ideological and human rights-respecting approaches to the huge drug markets in the United States. We know that the current approach throwing good money after bad; increasing the corruption, violence and human rights abuses; thereby destabilizing Mexico is not working. RJ

The agencies in charge of Mexico’s drug war have high-ranking officials who protect the cartels

By Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso
Translation from the original Spanish and notes by Kristin Bricker

The animosity between the heads of Federal Attorney General’s Office and the Public Security Ministry don’t just immobilize the federal government and make its crusade against drug traffickers and organized crime futile. It also shows that both institutions are so porous that the gangsters have already positioned themselves in them. The infiltration is of such magnitude that even Eduardo Medina Mora and Genaro Garcia Luna have become suspect. (more…)

By Jorge Carrasco Araizaga and Francisco Castellanos J., Proceso
Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker for NarcoNews

Through confessions obtained “under torture” and with multiple irregularities, the Federal Attorney General’s office (PGR in its Spanish initials) maintains the three alleged culprits under arrest in the September 15 terrorist attack in Morelia, Michoacan—which left eight people dead and 106 injured—even though many family members and neighbors assure that the accused were in Lazaro Cardenas [250 miles south of Morelia] the moment the attacks occurred.

Juan Carlos Castro Galeana, Julio Cesar Mondragon Mendoza, and Alfredo Rosas Elicea, the suspects in the grenade attack, were kidnapped and tortured by armed men in Lazaro Cardenas and later brought to a house in Apatzingan, where they were tormented again, before federal authorities took charge of them.

According to the criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEITA/110/2008, the accused say they were kidnapped and psychologically and physically tortured for days so that they would confess to the attack and to being members of Los Zetas.

According to their statements, which Proceso had access to, the kidnappings happened between September 18-23 in Lazaro Cardenas, a port city in the zone controlled by the La Familia cartel, which is involved in a turf war with Los Zetas for control of drug trafficking in Michoacan. La Familia had offered to undertake its own investigation to find people responsible for the attack.

Despite the fact that the Assistant Attorney General for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO), Marisela Morales Ibañez, credited an anonymous call that revealed the location of those who are now detained, a memo provided to this weekly by a member of an intelligence organization says that on September 18 “there was a meeting between the security authorites in Michoacan and La F. (La Familia), in some cabins in the vicinity of Cuitzeo (security barracks), agreeing that they would detain various people” in order to blame the Morelia attacks and the grenade attack against the Michoacan Assistant Attorney General’s Office in Lazaro Cardenas, which occurred this past August. (more…)

“(These murderers) had been ‘vetted’ by U.S. officials for human rights abuses and approved to receive assistance in 2008… in spite of extensive reports that their units had carried out murders of civilians.”

Note: On the passage of Round 1 of Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico) funding in June, 2008, Amnesty International declared ‘good news’ weak protections of human rights written into the law. Those protections apply at the discretion of the Secretary of State, allowing her (or him) to hold up (a miniscule 15% of) Plan Mexico funding unless human rights conditions are met. The remaining 85% can be allocated unconditionally!

After 8 years of brutal counter-insurgency, targeting of civilians, and making Colombia a living hell for indigenous peoples, labor activists, dissenters of any kind, such cavalier disregard for the impacts of u.s. ‘drug war’ policy by a ‘premier’ human rights organization like Amnesty International (and others like Human Rights Watch) is disgraceful!

Here below is the excellent report by FOR’s Colombia Program Co-Director, John Lindsay-Poland

Army commanders fired for killings received U.S. training and assistance

Colombian Army commander Mario Montoya resigned today, in the wake of a scandal over army killings of civilians that a United Nations official on Saturday called “systematic and widespread.” A protégé of the United States, Montoya was an architect of the “body count” counterinsurgency strategy that many analysts believe led to the systematic civilian killings. (more…)

As U.S. voters go to the polls the issue of the ‘war on drugs’ looms large both domestically and internationally.

The best journalism on the international ‘front’ has come out of Rolling Stone magazine[the failed ‘war on drugs’ (Dec. 2007)and the ‘war next door’ (Nov. 2008). On the domestic ‘front’, Alternet (Nov. 2008) has written a compelling short piece about efforts to undo some of the damage in the U.S.

And as a corruption scandal hits the Mexican AG’s (Prosecutor General of the Republic’s) office, with more than 35 of its officials revealed to be working for narcotraffickers. today’s New York Times also has an important piece from which a key excerpt is included here.

Take note that it is this AG’s office - which Bush’s Plan Mexico/Merida Initiative is slated to provide $60 million to - which promoted the cover up story that Brad was shot at close range and that he was shot by the activists who in reality were helping him (as is clear in the video and photographic footage, forensic and witness evidence etc.).

November 2, 2008
In Mexico’s Drug War, Sorting Out Good Guys From Bad
By MARC LACEY

It has long been known that drug gangs have infiltrated local police forces. Now it is becoming ever more clear that the problem does not stop there. The alarming reality is that many public servants in Mexico are serving both the taxpayers and the traffickers.

The latest corruption scandal has prompted President Calderón’s attorney general to order a restructuring and purging of his office, and specifically of Siedo, which was formed from another agency that was shut down after being infiltrated by drug spies.

The men in suits, it turns out, were both bureaucrats and bad guys, officials say, corrupt employees high up in an elite unit of the federal attorney general’s office who were feeding secret information to the feared Beltrán Leyva cartel in exchange for suitcases full of cash.

Their arrest, and the firing of 35 other suspect law enforcement officials, represents the most extensive corruption case that this country, which knows corruption all too well, has ever seen. And it raises a question that is on the lips of many Mexicans: how does one know who is dirty and who is clean?

Where are the Colombia experts monitoring Plan Colombia for human rights abuses (e.g. what happened to those labor activists and why are those unemployed people being killed by the hundreds?)?

Not to mention 4 million Internally Displaced People too scared to tell U.S. government backed paramilitaries tied to Colombian government and powerful landholders (cattle ranchers et al) to return their land.

Clear that inside-the-beltway p.r. has infected some human rights organizations’ analysis and ACTIONS.

Here’s a recent biopsy of Colombian democracy after 8 years of ‘aid’ from the U.S. under Plan Colombia.

And keep in mind that Plan Mexico includes a significant amount of money for intelligence gathering. And that investigations of members of the Colombian military/government for systematic human rights abuses have dragged on for years, inconclusively:

Colombia’s intelligence chief steps down

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac7ba574-a174-11dd-82fd-000077b07658.html

Colombia’s intelligence chief has stepped down after acknowledging her agents secretly spied on left-wing political opponents of President Alvaro Uribe, in the latest surveillance scandal to tarnish his administration.
(more…)

English (Spanish translation below)
October 24, 2008
Press Release
Reporters Without Borders

Federal Authorities Opt for Impunity in Brad Will and Robert Mora Murders

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the Mexican federal justice ministry’s response to a recent recommendation by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) regarding the October 2006 fatal shooting of US cameraman Brad Will of the Indymedia agency in the southern city of Oaxaca (see 2 October release).

Not only has the ministry ignored the serious irregularities in the Will murder investigation but, on 22 October, a judge announced the indictment and imminent trial of three supporters of the grass-roots Popular Assembly of Oaxaca Peoples (APPO), two of whom have been freed on bail. Arrest orders were also issued for seven witnesses on a charge concealing a crime. Will was covering the APPO’s demonstrations against the Oaxaca state government at the time of his death. (more…)

Communique from Adherents of the OTHER CAMPAIGN in Oaxaca, October 21, 2008

Faced with constant threats and harassment against us and our families, we
write this letter so that the men and women of Mexico and the world are
made aware of the abuse of power exercised recently by institutions such
as the Federal Attorney General.

We have a right to live in peace, as do our families. From the very
beginning, we five witnesses voluntarily came forward to contribute to the
resolution of this case.

We gave statements before the Federal Attorney General, contributing
information, we supplied testimony based on the real events, and we
presented counter arguments to that of the State Attorney General, given
that the information and investigation led by this institution has always
been full of irregularities, ambiguities, and omissions. (more…)

From article: “According to Robert Jereski from Friends of Brad Will, his organization chose to oppose Plan Mexico outright instead of pushing for human rights conditions because “we saw what happened with Plan Colombia and those human rights conditions. They didn’t stop that country from becoming the worst country in the world for rights for labor activists, where hundreds have been assassinated by the government or government-supported paramilitaries. We saw how ineffective the conditions were, that [Plan Colombia] resulted in 4 million displaced people driven off of resource-rich land by the same thugs the US government has been supporting through the Uribe government and military. We had serious doubts about (the) value of human rights conditions.

The big players in human rights, however, remained silent throughout much of the debate over Plan Mexico. Human Rights Watch did not take a stance on the initiative until after it was passed. Amnesty International only weighed in publicly after the measure had passed both houses of congress. Its Mexico office circulated a letter calling US collaboration with Mexico “appropriate and timely” and simply requested that human rights conditions be included in the final version that would be sent to the president. ”

Posted by Kristin Bricker - October 24, 2008

Official human rights ombudsman says the government believed Plan Mexico funds were conditioned on resolving Brad Will case

The Mexican government’s human rights watchdog, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH in its Spanish initials) slammed the Federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) yesterday over the arrests of Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) supporters in the Brad Will murder case.

The PGR arrested three APPO supporters and has issued warrants for eight more in the Will case. José Luis Soberanes Fernández, the head of the CNDH, said that with the arrests, the PGR made the decision “to ignore the body of evidence that we sent it” regarding the case.

One principal component of the CNDH report that the PGR explicitly rejected was that Will was shot from a distance of 35-55 meters, not the 2 meters that the PGR claims. Despite the fact that a forensic video specialist hired by the Will family has found bullet streaks in the last two frames of Will’s video, and that anyone who shot Will at close range would have appeared in his video since he was shot head-on, the PGR maintains that the APPO supporters standing around Will were the ones who murdered him. (more…)

Link to Albert Covelli’s Video

Hemispheric Conference Against Militarization Says No to Merida Initiative, U.S. Military Bases
For the meeting’s full declaration and demands, please visit:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5605

More than 800 representatives from organizations throughout the Americas made their way to the northern city of La Esperanza, Honduras to take a strong stand against the militarization of their nations and communities. Following three days of workshops, the participants read their final declaration in front of the gates of the U.S. Army Base at Palmerola, Honduras, just hours from the conference site.

The first demand on the list was to close down this and all U.S. military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean. By the end of the demonstration, the walls of the base sported hundreds of spray-painted messages and demands that contrasted sharply with their prison-like austerity.

The demilitarization conference also called for an immediate halt to the recently launched “Merida Initiative,” the Bush administration’s new Trojan horse for remilitarization of the region. (more…)