Truth as another casualty of the drug war.

The Mexican military has completed its investigation into the deaths of 2 brothers, Bryan and Martín Almanza Salazar, on April 3, 2010 in Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas at a military check-point. Not surprisingly their conclusion is that the boys, aged 5 and 9, had died as a result of a fragmentation grenade thrown at the SUV in which they were travelling with their parents.

The military goes on to say that the grenade is not one that is used by the government forces but was a type common for the cartel gunmen to use, and thus the cause of death was at the hands of these gunmen rather than government forces (as the two groups fought each other that day).

This conclusion contradicts the events described by the parents (and three other adults who were in the vehicle at the time) who claimed that the soldiers had opened fire upon their vehicle as they had slowed to enter the check-point and killed their sons.

Further, the parents stated that there was no fight and no other gunmen present at all, as claimed by the military investigators (which seems plausible since it would be hard to accept that parents with their children would drive into a gunbattle between 2 very well armed forces, who are throwing hand grenades at each other).

However, it is not only the parents who find fault with the fairytale spun by the top brass, the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) of Mexico also disputes the findings. The CNDH had launched an investigation of its own into the event of April 3 2010 and concluded that the boys died from gunshot wounds not grenade fragments as claimed by the military and that their findings corroborated the parent's version of the incident.

The CNDH further added that it has investigated 30 other complaints of the military over the last year with many of the factors being the same, i.e., that soldiers at military check-points fired indiscriminately and without provocation at vehicles, in many cases killing the unarmed and innocent occupants.

This is the main problem that arises when the military or the police investigate themselves. EVEN IF their highly implausible version was correct no one believes that the investigation was fair nor impartial (and in this case, who should we believe, the national organization that upholds human rights for all of Mexico or the military that has a VERY spotty record of being too trigger-happy and with telling the truth).

On the issue of mendacity, the governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, claimed that the convoy of Mexican and European rights activists and journalists, that was ambushed last Tuesday in an attack that killed two people, had staged the attack in an attempt to illicit sympathy for Triqui people cause and lay the blame on government forces (gosh those humanitarians are sneaky!) http://www2.esmas.com/160785/ (thanks to Kristin Bricker for the link)