[NYTr] Mexico: EPR Attacks Prison

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) - Jul 30, 2007

Weekly News Update on the Americas #909 - July 29, 2007

EPR ATTACK PRISON

In the early morning of July 28 people thought to be members of the
rebel Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR) assaulted a site in Chiapa de
Corzo, in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, where a federal
prison is being built. No injuries were reported in the incident,
during which an unknown number of attackers captured the three guards
at the site and locked them in a guard booth. The attackers then shot
up the site and painted slogans on the walls. Municipal police
arrived when they heard the shooting; they found about 40 used
cartridges on the scene.

The action was apparently meant to dramatize the EPR's demand for the
release of EPR leaders Alberto Cruz Sanchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya,
who were allegedly captured in the southern state of Oaxaca on May
24; the federal and the Oaxaca governments both deny that they are
holding the two men. The incident follows attacks on Mexican gas
pipelines on July 5 and 10 which the EPR reportedly carried out to
demand the release of Cruz Sanchez and Reyes Amaya [see Update #907].
The slogans painted on the walls at Chiapa de Corzo were: "They were
taken alive, we want them back alive," "EPR will win," "Long live the
EPR" and "Freedom for political prisoners." [La Jornada (Mexico)
7/29/07]

This was the second attack on a Mexican prison in two days. On the
evening of July 26, about 20 men armed with AK-47 assault rifles
attacked a prison in Juchitan de Zaragoza, Oaxaca. Authorities said
one police agent was wounded. Official sources suggested that people
involved in drug trafficking were attempting to free a prisoner. Some
local people claimed that the attack was by an elite army unit, the
Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFE), which they said was raiding a
nearby residence and attacked the prison by mistake. Oaxaca state
citizen protection secretary Sergio Segreste denied the army was
involved, noting that the army doesn't use AK-47s. He also denied
that the EPR carried out the assault. [LJ 7/27/07, 7/28/07]

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS INVESTIGATE

Irene Khan, general secretary of the UK-based human rights
organization Amnesty International (AI), is scheduled to visit Mexico
July 30-Aug. 5 for what AI calls a "high-level working visit" to
address its concerns about human rights violations in Mexico. The
group's concerns include reports of sexual assaults on women
prisoners by police agents during the repression of demonstrations in
San Salvador Atenco, Mexico state in May 2006; the government's
failure to solve the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez,
Chihuahua, over the last 15 years; and the repression of
anti-globalization protesters in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in May 2004
[see Updates #722, 760, 853]

Khan's visit is to include an interview with Mexican president Felipe
Calderon Hinojosa and a July 31 trip to Oaxaca, where the state
government is accused of repeated human rights abuses. On July 25 the
Mexican daily La Jornada reported that Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive
director of the Americas division of the US- based Human Rights
Watch, had telephoned Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz to urge an
"exhaustive and impartial investigation of the reports of the
excessive use of force and arbitrary detentions by police agents" at
a July 16 protest in Oaxaca city [see Update #908]. [LJ 7/29/07]

On July 20 the federal government signed an agreement to pay a total
of 725,000 pesos (about $66,000) to surviving members of a family
that was attacked by soldiers in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality,
Sinaloa state, on the night of May 31-June 1. Five family members
were killed--two young women and three children under eight--and
three were wounded [see Updates #902-904]. Military sources say that
19 soldiers, including three officers, remain in custody in Mazatlan
while the army continues a criminal investigation. [LJ 7/23/07]