An appalling discovery of US private contractors training the Mexican army in torture has received little attention in the United States despite the underlying issue about the influence of companies such as Blackwater Worldwide and Dynocorp establishing torture techniques abroad. The videos which surfaced in Mexico show an English speaking man directing actions against fellow officers.
In one video, Special Tactical Group officers squirt mineral water up the nose of another officer, a torture technique commonly utilized by Mexican police. The man's head is also shoved into a hole which supposedly contains rats and feces
In the other, the unidentified contractor drags an officer through a puddle of his own vomit as punishment for failure to complete a training exercise. The company involved in this tape is currently unknown.
Warning, the videos contain graphic images.
The response by Mexico was to claim the training was justified in the fight with drug cartels. Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, Secretary of Public Security for León, Mexico, said torture training for police is necessary:
It is essential to have a special group that responds to certain conditions. More and more we see the clear involvement, not only in León, but in the whole state, of organized crime, and there is a need to have these groups.
It is unclear that Mexican cartels engage in the sort of activity in the video. Torture victims of cartels often have pulled teeth and fingers cut off. de Vaca and Leon's conservative mayor Vicente Guerrero Reynoso went on to criticize the media for showing the video. Reynoso claimed no laws were broken and no one in the video would be disciplined.
Whether this statement is true or not, it is at odds with official state law. Mexican newspaper La Jornada reported that torture is a crime in Guanajuato: in accordance with Article 264 of the state Penal Code, the public servant who 'intentionally exercises violence against a person, be it in order to obtain information or constituting an illicit investigation method,' faces a punishment of 2-10 years in prison.
León Police Chief Carlos Tornero told the AP that the English-speaking man in the videos is a contractor from a private US security firm. Tornero did not elaborate on the man's identity, the US company involved, or who contracted them.
It is unclear whether the $1.6 billion Plan Merida would increase training of this sort. However, the existence of this footage should be troubling to everyone. It is no surprise that Mexico tortures as their police have been notoriously been known for these sorts of activities. Linking their training and tactics directly to American involvement is a first however, though I suspect it won't be the last.