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Subject: New Scrutiny Expected of Mexican Rights; Conflicting Accounts of Americans'
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 11:48:46 EST
Message-ID: <13.1992Nov14.114846@AmeriCast.com>

New Scrutiny Expected of Mexican Rights; Conflicting Accounts of
Americans' Deaths Highlight System of Ongoing Judicial Abuses<By
Tod Robberson=Washington Post Foreign Service=

ROSARITO, Mexico - Police chief Jesus Arias Rico pointed to a
three-foot-high crossbar on the door of the cell that held Mario
Vicente Amado, a U.S. citizen who was jailed in this town 20
miles south of the border June 6 and never went home.

Arias said the metal strip - the only usable horizontal fixture
in the 8-by-15-foot concrete cell - was the gallows from which
Amado hung himself shortly after his midafternoon arrest on
charges of being drunk and disorderly. According to Arias's
description, Amado tied his sweater to the crossbar, then used
one sleeve as a noose to hang himself while sitting on the floor.

That explanation - thrown into question by U.S.  and Mexican au-
topsies and reportedly under investigation by the FBI -
highlights what can happen to U.S. citizens who get caught up in
what many critics charge is an abuse-riddled Mexican justice sys-
tem. But the troubles encountered by Americans are only emblemat-
ic of what human rights monitors say is a broader problem faced
daily by Mexican citizens.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari repeatedly has pledged to
halt the abuses by ending Mexico's traditional impunity for law-
enforcement officers who step beyond the law. He has forced the
prosecution of several cases since taking office in 1988 as part
of a widely touted effort to make government institutions work
better in Mexico.

The issue nevertheless is expected to fall under increased scru-
tiny in the United States after the Clinton administration takes
over.  Under President Bush, the U.S. government emphasized the
positive as part of a policy of improved U.S.-Mexican relations
designed to foster recently completed negotiations for the North
American Free Trade Agreement.

Mexican authorities termed Amado's death a suicide, despite
separate Mexican and American autopsies indicating he suffered
massive internal bleeding before he died. The U.S. autopsy, con-
ducted in Amado's home town of Los Angeles, suggested the bleed-
ing was caused by a severe blow that ruptured his liver.  Abra-
sions on Amado's back, shoulder and scalp suggested his body had
been dragged into the cell.

Amado's brother, American investigators and at least one Mexican
government official described the suicide scenario as absurd. A
paramedic who examined Amado's body in the cell rejected the of-
ficial account as "impossible." The paramedic said a deep, cord-
like bruise that encircled Amado's neck "could not possibly have
been made by a sweater." An Oct. 15 report by the Los Angeles
County coroner's office, which analyzed the Mexican and U.S. au-
topsies, came to the same conclusion but did not offer a specific
cause of death.

The FBI is pressing Mexico for answers, according to U.S.
government sources.

Diego Zavala, Amnesty International's human rights investigator
for Mexico, said the government's attitude toward such cases "can
be summarized in one word: impunity." In addition to dozens of
torture and other rights-abuse cases, Amnesty has documented the
deaths of 10 Mexicans while in police custody over the last three
years. Torture was evident in every case, Amnesty said. Police
attributed two of those deaths to suicide.  Amado's case and
those of two other Americans whose deaths this summer were attri-
buted by human rights groups to mistreatment by Mexican authori-
ties have raised further questions about Mexico's commitment to
halt human rights abuses, despite the pledges from Salinas.

Washington attorney Abbe Lowell has accused the Mexican govern-
ment of withholding photographs and documents related to the case
of William Lewis Yost, a Peace Corps staff member who died in a
Mexico City jail last August. Mexican authorities said Yost
killed himself with his own pistol while awaiting deportation.

Lowell said the lack of a proper autopsy by Mexican authorities
forced them to seek a second one last month in Pennsylvania and
that he still is awaiting the results.

In another case, 23-year-old Jennifer Whitt died of an asthma at-
tack five hours after her Sept. 20 release from a Mexican prison
in the Rio Grande border town of Reynosa. She had spent nine
months in prison for purchasing 280 Valium tablets at a Reynosa
pharmacy. Her prescription, written by a Mexican doctor, was for
100. Whitt's parents said their daughter needed the Valium to
treat a bursitis problem caused by a car accident, and that she
purchased them in Mexico because the price was a fraction of that
in the United States.

Whitt was released after a Reynosa judge ruled she had not
violated Mexican law.  According to a Mexican senator and Ameri-
can attorneys who intervened in the case, Whitt's prison stay was
the result of an elaborate scheme by police, judicial officials
and prison authorities to extort tens of thousands of dollars in
bribes and payoffs from Whitt's parents.

The parents, who spent nearly $60,000 to free their daughter,
said Whitt was denied proper medical care and received poor-
quality medicine for her asthma condition while in prison.

Reynosa prison director Luis Bueno, however, denied any maltreat-
ment of Whitt and said she received proper medical care when it
was warranted.  Regarding the Amado case, U.S. Ambassador John
Negroponte sent two diplomatic letters to the attorney general
this summer urging further investigation and protesting the fact
that Mexican police took four days to notify U.S. consular offi-
cials of Amado's death.

A U.S. consular official in Tijuana, 20 miles north of Rosarito,
said protocols between the two countries stipulate "immediate no-
tification" when American prisoners die in Mexican custody.

But police chief Arias said Rosarito police did not violate stan-
dard procedure, and he is sticking by the official version of
Amado's death. "I can offer only this clear and concise explana-
tion: He died by hanging himself with his sweater," Arias said.
There were no witnesses to Amado's death, he added, as the four
or five Mexican men sharing the cell were asleep at the time.
Enrique Garza Esparza, deputy attorney general for the state of
Baja California, declined comment, saying the investigation was
being handled by authorities in Rosarito and Mexico City. In Mex-
ico City, Attorney General Ignacio Morales Lechuga declined com-
ment. A spokesman said it was a "state problem rather than
federal one."<11:05 11-14C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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