CAT/C/75
page 18
May 1999 to April 2000, it also contains a summary of all the recommendations issued during
that period. One of the recommendations describes the incident in question as torture: “It was
established that the complainants were detained by State judicial police officers on 10 June 2000,
allegedly while carrying out a robbery; they were later beaten by their captors, as they
themselves stated and as stated in the medical certificates issued to them by the (...) medical
officer of the Office of the State Attorney-General, which showed that they had suffered injuries
chiefly to the front and back of the abdomen and chest; Mr. Melitón Ruiz Ruiz also suffered
second-degree burns.”10
65.
Twenty-three recommendations described the incidents concerned as involving injuries.
The summaries suggest that, the State Human Rights Commission’s descriptions
notwithstanding, many of the incidents could be categorized as torture under article 1 of the
Convention, as in the following examples:
“The complainant’s human rights had been violated insofar as it was established
that on 29 July he presented changes in health that had left physical marks on his body;
the senior nurse (…) at the prison infirmary, and the (...) medical expert at the La Costa
Regional Deputy Public Attorney’s Office, confirmed that the prisoner presented
unhealed injuries, which had probably been inflicted by the Director of the Regional
Penitentiary in Santa Catalina Juquila, Oaxaca, in order to obtain information on a
robbery committed at the prison shop; the complainant’s version of events was
corroborated by medical certificates and by statements from other prisoners. In the
course of the investigation into the complaint, it emerged that the Prison Director very
likely also encouraged confrontations between prisoners in order to provoke attacks on
the people who had spoken against him to the public attorney’s office or to this
Commission and identified him as the person who had beaten and injured the
complainant.”11
“The human rights of Carlos Fernando Romero Luna were found to have been
violated when the complainant was detained by members of the municipal police in a
street in the centre of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, for throwing stones at the rooks in the trees.
Following his detention, he was taken to the municipal police headquarters, where he
sustained injuries; according to the medical certificate he had a fracture in the middle
third of the left humerus.”12
“The complainant’s human rights were found to have been violated, insofar as
injuries were inflicted by members of the State judicial police stationed in Tuxtepec,
Oaxaca; according to the complainant’s statement to the medical officer at the Regional
Penitentiary in Tuxtepec, he was beaten and dragged along the ground by the police at
the time of his arrest and sustained bruising to his front left side, injuries to the right eye,
livid bruising and secondary muscular pains; in addition, in his initial statement to the
Second Criminal Court, Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, he stated, among other things, that he had
been detained by members of the judicial police, who took him to the Papaloapan River,
placed a black plastic bag over his head down to the neck, then put him in the water, beat
him all over, kicked him and dragged him along the ground; reddish grazes were
confirmed on the front left side, as well as grazes on the right side of the face, around the
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