Since Maria Puga saw the images of the mobile phone almost 15 years ago from her husband shouting in anxiety when he was surrounded by federal borders officers, she knew he was tortured before his death, she said on Thursday.
This week, in a primary decision of its kind, the Inter -American Human Rights Commission agreed that federal laws of the application of laws have tortured Anastasio Hernández Rojas by beating it with batons, depriving him several times and on his knees while he was hand at the port of entrance to San Ysidro.
The historic decision has marked the first time that the Commission, an international body which is part of the organization of American states and investigation of massacres, extrajudicial murders and other rights violations through the Western hemisphere, published such conclusions in a case concerning a death in the hands of the application of American law.
The Commission also judged that federal officials had conducted a biased and incomplete investigation into the death of Hernández Rojas, used excessive force when he was selected, discriminated against him and denied family justice, all in violation of the international protocols to which the United States accepted.
“The acts of police violence against Mr. Hernández at the port of entry of San Ysidro were intentionally perpetrated, in order to intimidate, control and punish, and … caused intense sufferings to the victim, and (the commission) concludes that they constituted acts of torture,” wrote the commissioners in the report on 43 pages published on Wednesday.
“It’s the truth,” Puga told the Union-Tribune Thursday. Speaking in Spanish, she said that the death of her husband destroyed her and the couple’s five children, but hearing her cries sparked a mixture of courage and rage that pushed her for more than a decade to ask for justice. She said that she hoped that the United States will follow the committee’s recommendations to reopen the investigation and will hold responsible responsible.
“(It is) the first time that an independent and impartial organization has provided full accounting of what has happened to Anastasio,” said Roxanna Altholz, director of the Human Rights Clinic at UC Berkeley Law and one of the lawyers who represented Puga and his family in the case with Andrea Guerrero of Alliance San Diego. “(The Commission) has also made a history – that the cornerstone of the American law on the use of force, the so -called” objectively reasonable “standard, violates international human rights law.”
Altholz said that the Commission’s decision “is more than a conviction”, but rather “a plan for structural reform and an appeal to the American government to align its laws and policies on the fundamental principles of human rights and dignity”.
Hernández Rojas, who was 42 years old at his death, was a Mexican citizen who had lived in San Diego since he was a teenager. Shortly after being expelled in May 2010, he was detained while he was trying to sneak into the country and took to the Entrance Port of San Ysidro, where he was to be sent back to Mexico. The authorities declared that he was conflicting and that at one point, he would have tried to kick the officials of the application of the laws. During the incident, two agents of the application of the immigration forces and customs hit him with batons and another agent kneeling on his back. A customs and borders protection agent pulled a taser over him four times while others held him in front.
Hernández Rojas stopped breathing during the meeting and was hospitalized for about two days before being removed from a ventilation machine. An autopsy of the Bureau of the County Legalist of the County of San Diego deemed his death a homicide and found that many factors have contributed to a fatal heart attack, in particular intoxication to methamphetamine, heart disease, taser impact, physical effort and constraints. This autopsy concluded that methamphetamine played a key role in his death, while a second independent autopsy concluded that methamphetamine was not a key factor.
The FBI, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Ministry of Justice, the Office of Inspector General of the Ministry of Homeland Security and a large jury have all investigated the death. They concluded in November 2015 that no criminal accusation would be brought against the officers involved. The family of Hernández Rojas continued the federal government, regulating civil prosecution in 2017 for $ 1 million.
But Puga continued to put pressure for justice and brought the case to the Human Rights Committee, which is an organization within the organization of the American states and based in Washington, DC
The United States Department of State represents the United States in the organization of American states. The officials of the State Department have failed several times or refused to engage on the substance of the case, asking rather that the commission does not take the case because the family of Hernández Rojas had already settled its civil lawsuit. The United States has also argued that the agreements guaranteeing certain human rights signed by the members of the international organization are not binding, which means that the United States does not have a legal obligation to follow them.
The Commission noted in its report that it gave the United States the possibility of responding to its conclusions in December and again in March. The Commission said the government had never responded.
Altholz, UC Berkeley’s lawyer, criticized the United States in 2021 for his failure to respond, saying that he would give “authoritarian diets in the Americas to do the same”.
She said on Thursday that she and the other lawyers in the case are “not naive. We know that the United States has a long history of rejection of international decisions against him. But we also know that Anastasio’s family is not alone. They are part of an increasing movement of survivors, defenders and communities who believe that dignity does not stop at the border and justice. ”
The case has already resulted in a concrete measure – the dissolution of the so -called criticisms who operated unattended in the border patrol sectors along the American -Mexican border. The secret units, the first of which were created in 1987 in the San Diego sector, inserted in surveys on incidents of which they did not have the power to investigate, according to a report last year by the US Government Accountability Office.
Guerrero of the San Diego Alliance and other lawyers investigating the death of Hernández Rojas alerted the congress on what they called the “Shadow police units” after discovering that the unit based in San Diego had altered and even destroyed evidence in the case of Hernández Rojas to protect the agents involved. They then started to find the documentation of other cases in which similar units had interfered in other sectors.
Among their conclusions, there was that the candidate in the process of President Donald Trump directed the CBP, Rodney Scott, signed an administrative assignment for the medical files of Hernández Rojas according to which the lawyers were then retained by San Diego police officers investigating. Scott, who was the deputy chief of the acting patrol in San Diego at the time, was asked about his role in the Hernández Rojas case on Wednesday during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance committee.
Two former high -ranking officials from the CBP submitted affidavits in the Human Rights Commission case. One said that the type of use of an administrative assignment was “illegal and potentially obstructed to justice”. Another called on “badly if not criminal” use.
Scott admitted Wednesday that he had signed the assignment but testified that it was a standard procedural act that he had completed after the summons was examined by a legal advisor. When asked if he had interfered in the investigation into the death of Hernández Rojas, he replied “absolutely not”.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
