The horror: police kidnap 7 young people; two are dead, 3 were saved and the rest ... no one knows

    Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Sin Embargo      
                                               

Three young people were missing. Three, aged 15, 16 and 20, were arrested by municipal police on December 27 in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. According to the story of one of the victims, they were taken to a safe house and then handed over to a section of the Ministerial Police in Acapulco, where they were held in isolation and tortured for seven days. 

On January 3, they were left tied up in front of a shopping center in the capital of Guerrero. Other police officers found them, but instead of being handed over to their relatives, two of them were arrested on charges of robbery and rape; the third managed to escape.

By Zacarías Cervantes

Guerrero / Mexico City, January 9 (ElSur / SinEmbargo) - Between December 23 and 31, seven young people were reported missing after being detained by police in Chilpancingo. Two of them turned up dead, three reported being tortured by the officers and two are not yet located.

On January 3, three young people were located behind a Soriana department store next to the Municipal Palace of Chilpancingo. They were half-naked, bound by their hands showing signs of torture, but alive.

According to relatives of the three youths, Chilpancingo police arrested them on December 27 and later handed them over to a group of the Acapulco Ministerial Police, who kept them incommunicado for seven days before being abandoned in the Guerrero capital's commercial center.

The three young men, 15, 16 and 20 years old, were saved thanks to one of them writing down the phone number of his girlfriend on soap and asking someone to call her to say where they were. The day after the call was when they were released.

Acapulco human rights defender Julia Alonso Carvajal said that the Ministerial Police's intention was to disappear or murder them, such as Abel Aguilar García and Efraín Patrón Ramos -who are still not located-, and Jorge Arturo Vázquez Campos and Marcos Catalán Cabrera - found dead on January 3, also in Chilpancingo.

Jorge Arturo Vázquez Campos was 30 years old and Marco Catalán Cabrera, 34. Efraín Patrón Ramos is 25 years old and Abel Aguilar García, 18.

Virgilio Marcelo, father of 15 year old Héctor Josué, the youngest, said that his son was arrested at around 3:00 pm on December 27 by the Municipal Police on Eusebio Mendoza street, in the Jardines del Sur neighborhood, in Chilpancingo.

He said that since that day [his son's] whereabouts were unknown and that the police did not take him to the Barandilla delegation, "or if they took him nobody wanted to inform us". They had no news of their son from that day until January 3, when he was found along with the other two young people in the south of the city.

After the discovery, Héctor Josué managed to escape. His father did not explain how, but the other two young people, instead of being handed over to their relatives, were detained on charges of robbery.

Julia Alonso denounced that the human rights of the three young men and due process were flagrantly violated, since they were deprived of their freedom, held incommunicado and tortured for seven days, and now two of them have not been made available to any authority when, in accordance with the new Criminal Justice System, detainees must be placed at the disposal of authority within two hours after their arrest.

The human rights defender said that the case shows that in this illegal detention, disappearance and torture not only involves the Chilpancingo Police, but also the Ministerial of the General State Prosecutor's Office (FGE).

Relatives and friends of other disappeared young men marched from the Granados Maldonado mall to the municipal police barracks. Photo: José I. Hernández, Cuartoscuro.

According to Alonso Carvajal, the teenager reported that after being detained by the Municipal Police on December 27, they were taken to a safe house near Chilpancingo, where they heard that there were other detainees.

There, the torture began and they do not know at what moment they were delivered to the Ministerial Police of the Public Ministry Agency of the central sector of Acapulco and put in charge of a commander named "Tino”, added the human rights defender.

"They are alive by miracle, because the intention was to disappear or kill them as happened with the other young people," said Julia Alonso.

Last Sunday, the State Prosecutor, Javier Olea, declared that "some media outlets in Chilpancingo have disseminated information on four other disappeared young people." He added that three young people are charged with home robbery and rape, and that the fourth is a ”fugitive."

Julia Alonso has demanded the security camera footage of the Acapulco and Chilpancingo agencies’ facilities to check how the young people were treated, however, it has been denied.

She also demanded that the Prosecutor's Office of Guerrero investigate the case or, otherwise, go to other bodies, such as the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) to discover the possible links of the Municipal and Ministerial police to organized crime.