Doubt cast on confession in Rodríguez murder - Blog - Committee to Protect Journalists
The man who Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa said had confessed to taking part in the murder of reporter Armando Rodríguez Carreón was tortured, the newspaper El Diario in Ciudad Juárez reported today. On Wednesday, Calderón told a delegation from CPJ and the Inter American Press Association about the man’s alleged involvement in the killing. Mexico’s attorney general, Arturo Chávez Chávez, cast the confession as a breakthrough in the case.
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The Rodríguez case has become a yardstick for the collapsed criminal justice system in Ciudad Juárez, where so far this year there have been 2,200 murders associated with a war between two cartels and the government’s weak efforts to fight them both. Despite having as many as 7,500 soldiers and 2,500 federal police officers, the government has failed to make the city a model for reasserting authority over organized crime. There are few arrests and many fewer successful prosecutions.
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