Posted on 07/17/2010 10:20:48 AM PDT by thecodont
(via The Drudge Report)
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram.
Mexico's military says it found two suitcases full of marijuana in the cab of the pickup truck. Two soldiers later testified that they drove the two Americans to a military compound on the outskirts of town, questioned them briefly, then turned them over to civilian authorities. The Americans were charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell.
Those two men—Shohn Huckabee, 23 years old, and Carlos Quijas, 36—are being held in a Ciudad Juárez jail. They tell a different story about what happened that night. They say Mexican soldiers planted the marijuana in their truck. When they arrived at the military base, they say, they were blindfolded, tied up, hit with rifle butts, shocked with electricity and threatened with death.
Mexico's military is leading President Felipe Calderón's war against the nation's drug cartels, and Ciudad Juárez has emerged as one of the bloodiest battlegrounds. Nationwide, drug violence has claimed more than 25,000 lives since 2006—with government security forces accounting for an estimated 7% of the dead. In June alone, 103 police and soldiers were killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Any drug smuggler will accuse law enforcement of planting evidence.
“Those two men—Shohn Huckabee, 23 years old, and...”
Why doesn’t he just get his dad to pardon him...as he did with that guy who KILLED 4 COPS in cold blood, near Seattle?
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Testimony from three Mexican witnesses at the scene—people who said they didn't know the Americans—contradicted the army's version of events.
José Antonio Bujanda, 21, told the court on Feb. 26 that he saw soldiers pull over Messrs. Huckabee and Quijas while he was washing windows of cars lined up to cross the bridge into Texas. He said he saw soldiers plant the suitcases in Mr. Huckabee's gray Dodge Ram.
"The two soldiers went to their own truck. I saw them take out two suitcases, then put them in the gray truck," he said.
Abraham Antero Torres, a 19-year-old candy seller, testified that he saw the same. "The military men that were behind took out two black traveler's suitcases and put them into the Ram, and that was it," he said.
A third witness, Fernando Monsiváis, another window washer, told the court: "The soldiers put the suitcases in the truck, the young men's truck."
Mr. Bujanda was shot and killed in front of his home by an unknown assailant on July 2. Attempts to reach Messrs. Torres and Monsiváis to comment were unsuccessful.
Alejandro Dominguez, a fingerprint expert hired by Mr. Huckabee's family, testified in March that the marijuana packages showed no signs of his fingerprints.
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I agree it is stupid to go to Mexico these days. I don't think it should result in a life sentence. According to the article, one went to visit relatives and the other went to have his father's truck repaired cheaply, which was very common before drug wars. Millions still cross to do those things every year. These guys just didn't get the memo yet.
Your compassion meter is set a little low.
All that may well be, but it still doesn’t explain why the military would do that in the first place. In fact it begs the question. I lived on the border for several years, and it reset my compassion meter.
I live on the border too, and I refuse to go across anymore and I tell everyone not too, but if some stupid young person did go across, and they got framed like this, I'd want Americans to do everything they could to help them get away from that rat-hole.
The only judgment I passed on them was that they were foolish to cross over there in the first place, given what is going on. The story still doesn’t make sense. And your “reason” why the Mexican military did it, as reported in the WSJ, sounds very dodgy. They planted drugs on them so they could question them if they knew anything about drugs? Sorry, I still don’t see why the military would be doing that.
Sounds like they planted drugs on them because they thought they were drug dealers. Have you ever heard of cops planting evidence on a suspect they believe is guilty?
The cops planted drugs on them? I thought it was the military? Seriously, looking at those two, the military could not in its wildest dreams have mistaken them for major narcotraficantes. I just can’t see the military going to all that trouble. Let us agree to disagree. And I no longer live on the border, thank God.
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