Groups activity pack, September 2014 - Torture in Mexico

The military and police force in Mexico are routinely torturing people in their care - sometimes to death. The torturers are rarely held to account.

Police and soldiers, often deployed in public security operations, are routinely torturing people as a way to extract 'confessions' or 'information' from criminal suspects or from people who are arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Torturers continue torturing without consequence

In the last ten years, reports of torture by Mexican forces rose by 600% - yet the Mexican government is still not taking torture seriously.

The few investigations that have been launched are slow and inadequate. Between 2006 and the end of 2013, 1,219 investigations into torture by Mexican forces were opened by the Federal Attorney General’s Office; they filed charges for just 12 cases. That means that 98% of investigations go nowhere.

The majority of those tortured by the police are people who are least likely to be able to file complaints and seek redress. People like Claudia Medina Tamariz, who was accused of being a member of a violent gang and taken by marines to a naval base where she was beaten, sexually assaulted and given electric shocks. To this date no one has been held to account for her torture.