'Out of control'
September 4, 2014
The use of torture by Mexican authorities has increased by 600 percent over the past ten years, according to an Amnesty International report released on Thursday.
The report, titled "Out of control: Torture and other ill-treatment in Mexico" details a "serious rise of torture and other ill-treatment and a prevailing culture of tolerance and impunity."
It accuses the Mexican justice system of turning a blind eye to reports of torture. It said 64 percent of the population feared torture in case of detention.
"Victims in different parts of the country told Amnesty International that they were subject to beatings, death threats, sexual violence, electric shocks and near-asphyxiation at the hands of police or armed forces, often with the aim of extracting 'confessions' or incriminating others in serious crimes," read a statement on the NGO's website.
What's more, according to the report, evidence extracted in this way is used in court cases to convict torture victims, which is in violation of the Istanbul Protocol - the common name for the UN Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, created in 1999.
The perpetrators of such violence are hardly ever punished.
The report is the first in a series of five different country reports from Amnesty's global STOP TORTURE campaign.
sb/ksb (dpa)