Tag Archives: Murder

Mexican army accused of withholding evidence in Murders

Relatives hold up posters during a rally in support of missing students from Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s army is withholding key evidence from international investigators in the case of 43 trainee teachers abducted and apparently massacred in late 2014, hampering their efforts to reach the truth, the experts told Reuters.

More than 18 months after the incident and just one week before the team of experts’ window to investigate closes, the army has still not handed over an undisclosed number of photographs and video taken by a military intelligence officer as police clashed with the students on Sept. 26, 2014, the five investigators said.

When Reuters requested the original photographs of police rounding up a group of the students from the military, via a freedom of information request, the army responded that the evidence was “inexistent.”

The investigators have also not been allowed to question the soldiers on duty that night at Battalion 27, based in Iguala in the restive southwestern state of Guerrero.

“Access to Battalion 27 and its members is fundamental to the investigation … The state needs to explain,” said James Cavallaro, president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which commissioned the panel of experts.

Testimony given by soldiers to the attorney general’s office shows the army was aware of the clashes and did not intervene.

“We have repeatedly asked the attorney general’s office to get (the military) to give us photographs, videos and documents which have been referred to in their own testimony,” said Francisco Cox, a Chilean member of the independent panel of five experts commissioned by the IACHR.

“We made a list of people who needed to testify. Some haven’t and there are others who ought to testify again,” he added. “They have made declarations and the fundamental issues still haven’t been answered.”

The panel members say the testimony the soldiers have given so far to the attorney general’s office is flawed and incomplete, because the questioning was too basic and they see some discrepancies.

Mexico’s defense ministry, which is in charge of the army, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Previously, the army has said there is no reason its soldiers should be interviewed by the team of international experts.

“I can’t permit them to treat soldiers as criminals or interrogate them and make it seem as though they had something to do with it,” Salvador Cienfuegos, who is Mexico’s defense minister and the head of the army, said in October.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment, but a source told Reuters the investigation would remain open and they have not called soldiers to give evidence again because they are preoccupied dealing with other parts of the case.

IMPUNITY

The case has drawn fresh attention to police abuses and impunity in Mexico. Drug cartels often have local security forces in their pockets, government purges of police ranks have shown.

The trainee teachers studied at a rural college in the restive state of Guerrero. About 100 were attacked in the town of Iguala on Sept 26, 2014 after they hijacked five buses to transport them to a march commemorating a massacre back in the 1960s.

Forty-three disappeared and are believed to have been murdered. But just one of them has been identified from a charred bone and the team of international experts rejected a government assertion that the 43 were burned in a pyre at a garbage dump.

The Mexican government said in January 2015 it believed that corrupt police working with a local drug gang murdered the students, citing testimony given by detained suspects. But relatives of the disappeared rejected that account, and accused the government of trying to close the case early.

No-one has yet stood trial over the case.

The government has said the gang mistook the youths for rival gang members, and that police handed them over to Guerreros Unidos henchmen, who then burned them to ashes at a garbage dump in the town of Cocula, in the hills near Iguala.

President Enrique Pena Nieto agreed with the IACHR in late 2014 to allow the international experts to investigate the case and promised them access to all the information they needed.

The experts, who examined the site, say the government’s garbage dump fire account is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash and charred bone fragments. The fate of the students, who were long seen by local authorities as troublemakers, is still unclear.

Families and lawyers of the disappeared students believe the army was involved in their abduction, though no evidence has been presented to support this.

“The army pitched in to form a cordon so the aggressors could act,” said Vidulfo Rosales, one of the lawyers representing families of the victims.

Since 2007, the army has been tasked with ensuring public security in some of the most violent corners of Mexico. However, lawmakers say there is no specific law that requires the army to intervene in such cases of unrest.

One military intelligence operative, Eduardo Mota, testified to the attorney general’s office in December 2014 that he snapped an undisclosed number of photographs as police threw tear gas at a group of the students in front of the local courthouse in Iguala and detained them. That group of students, which investigators number at about 17, was never seen again.

The army has not handed over the original photographs he testified to taking to the experts, who say they believe Mota also filmed video, citing standard army operating procedures. Mota could not be reached for comment.

Instead, officials later gave them a presentation that included a power-point containing four photographs from the night in question, one of the investigators said, but not the original files.

(Editing by Simon Gardner and Kieran Murray)

Arrest made in killing of University of Texas student

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A 17-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the killing of a University of Texas first-year dance student whose body was found on campus earlier this week, a local television station and Austin police said on Friday.

The arrest came the day after the victim was identified as Haruka Weiser, 18, of Oregon, who also was studying theater.

“A suspect is in custody,” the Austin Police Department said in a message on Twitter. Police did not provide details on the suspect, pending a news conference scheduled for Friday morning.

Austin television station KVUE, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, described the suspect as a 17-year-old boy and said firefighters provided an important tip that led helped police make the arrest.

Weiser was reported missing on Monday. Her body was found on Tuesday behind the university’s alumni center, near the main football stadium on the Austin campus, which is used by about 64,000 students, faculty and staff. Police have not released a cause of death.

Police had previously told reporters they had a person of interest in the death – a man seen in surveillance video on a bicycle near where the body was found.

Weiser left the drama building on Sunday night, likely headed for her dormitory, but never made it there, police said.

Her death sent shock waves through the university community, which held a vigil for Weiser on Thursday that was attended by hundreds of students, and it prompted a campus security review.

Gregory Fenves, president of the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement on Friday that increased police patrols will continue on campus.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Bill Trott)

U.S. violent crime rate rose in first half of 2015, FBI reports

The United States experienced a rise in the number of violent crimes during the first half of 2015, according to new statistics released by the FBI on Tuesday.

The bureau published its Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, which looks at crime in the United States in six-month windows. The most recent report, which covers the first six months of 2015, indicates that violent crime increased 1.7 percent when compared to the same six-month stretch of 2014.

Violent crimes include murders, rapes, non-negligent manslaughter, robberies and aggravated assaults, the bureau said in a news release. Each individual type of crime also increased from the totals reported in the first six months of 2014.

However, the FBI said property crimes like burglaries, larcenies and vehicle thefts, dipped 4.2 percent when compared to totals from the first half of 2014.

The preliminary data paints a partial picture of crime in the United States, but not a full one.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program, from which the new statistics were compiled, relies on approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country to voluntarily submit data to the FBI. The bureau said about 13,000 of those agencies submitted comparable data for the first halves of 2014 and 2015.

The FBI also didn’t release the number of crimes committed, only percent changes.

The statistics showed murder rose 6.2 percent, aggravated assaults went up 2.3 percent and there were 0.3 percent more robberies. The FBI has two different types of data for rape, as it changed the definition of the offense in 2013. The so-called “legacy definition” saw a 9.6 increase, the bureau said. The “revised definition,” which is broader and based on penetration, increased 1.1 percent.

Murders went up in cities of all sizes, including 17 percent in those with fewer than 10,000 people — despite just a 1.5 percent rise in violent crimes there.

When it comes to property crimes, the bureau said nationwide burglary rates fell 9.8 percent and larcenies dropped 3.2 percent, but motor vehicle thefts rose 1 percent.

The West was the only region in which violent crime and property crime increased, the bureau said, posting respective rises of 5.6 and 2.4 percent. The Northeast, meanwhile, was the only region to see declines in both categories, with an 8 percent drop in property crime and a 3.2 percent drop in violent offenses.

Data from the other two regions – the South and Midwest – mirrored national trends, with violent crime posting slight increases and property crimes declining.

The South saw a 1.6 percent increase in violent crime and a 6.4 percent drop in property crimes, according to the bureau, while the Midwest witnessed a 7 percent drop in property crimes and a 1.4 percent rise in violent crimes.

The FBI’s two most recent full-year crime reports, covering 2014 and 2013, both showed national declines in property and violent crimes from the previous year.

The FBI is expected to release its full report on 2015 crime data later this year.

Murder Rates in U.S. Rising

The murder rates in the United States are rising, with at lest 30 cities reporting violence on the rise.

Three cities, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Baltimore, are showing an increase of over 50% in the number of murders with Milwaukee leading the list with a 76% increase.

One woman had to flee Milwaukee after two of her five children were killed in shootings in a six month span.  Her 20-year-old daughter was shot and killed during a robbery at a birthday party being held at a Days Inn.  Then six months later her only son was shot and killed while sitting in a car.

She persuaded her family to flee the city but her remaining teen daughters only left after the 17-year-old daughter was shot while riding in a car.

“The violence was nothing like this before,” Holmes, 38, who grew up in Milwaukee, told the New York Times. “What’s changed is the streets and the laws and the parents. It’s become a mess and a struggle.”

The BBC said that some senior police officials say with media outlets and activist groups watching every move police make they are withdrawing more from situations and leaving criminals feeling they have more space to commit violent acts.

New Orleans police superintendent Michael Harrison told the New York Times that much of the increase is coming not from gang violence but rather killings involving people who know each other.

“That is not a situation that can be solved by policing,” Superintendent Harrison said. “It speaks to a culture of violence deeply ingrained into a community — a segment of the population where people are resolving their problems in a violent way.”

ISIS Destroys Ancient Temple

Islamic terrorist group ISIS has destroyed an ancient temple in the city of Palmyra, Syria in what the United Nations is calling a war crime.

The Temple of Baalshamin was destroyed on the heels of the terrorists killing Khaled al-Asssad.  The 82-year-old al-Asssad was an expert on Syrian antiquities and refused to tell the terrorists the locations of items they wanted to find.  Assad ran the antiquities department of Palmyra for 50 years.

Syria’s head of antiquities told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the terrorists blew up the temple on Sunday causing “much damage.”

“[ISIS] destroyed an incredibly important architectural structure,” Maamoun Abdulkarim said. “It is the first structure in the Palmyra complex to be destroyed, although they recently destroyed two Islamic shrines nearby.”

“They said they would destroy the statues but not the structures themselves inside Palmyra. They lied.”

The United Nations was swift to condemn the action.

“The systematic destruction of cultural symbols embodying Syrian cultural diversity reveals the true intent of such attacks, which is to deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history. One week after the killing of Professor Khaled al-Assaad, the archaeologist who had looked after Palmyra’s ruins for four decades, this destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity,” Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement.

“The art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, is a symbol of the complexity and wealth of the Syrian identity and history. Extremists seek to destroy this diversity and richness, and I call on the international community to stand united against this persistent cultural cleansing. Daesh (ISIS) is killing people and destroying sites, but cannot silence history and will ultimately fail to erase this great culture from the memory of the world. Despite the obstacles and fanaticism, human creativity will prevail, buildings and sites will be rehabilitated, and some will be rebuilt,” Bokova continued.

“Such acts are war crimes and their perpetrators must be accountable for their actions. UNESCO stands by all Syrian people in their efforts to safeguard their heritage, a heritage for all humanity.”

Florida Murder Investigated as “Ritualistic Killing” Connected to Witchcraft

An elderly mother and her two sons were found dead in their Florida Panhandle home last week and now police say it’s looking like they were killed as part of a witchcraft ritual.

At a news conference, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan told reporters they are suspecting witchcraft because of the positioning of the victim’s bodies.

“Initial research has led us to believe it was a ritualistic killing,” Morgan said. “The method of the murder — positioning of bodies — and our person of interest has some ties to a faith or religion that is indicative of that. The time of the death on Tuesday also coincides with what’s referred to as a blue moon, which occurs every three years.”

The sheriff described the scene as “very complex.”

“There are different factions of (witchcraft). While it doesn’t bother me to release that particular thing, I most assuredly do not want to defame or demean any particular practice,” Morgan said.

One of the victims was an employee of the Department of Homeland Security.  Morgan said there was no sign of forced entry or robbery at the home.

Colorado Theater Shooter Guilty Of Murder

A Colorado jury has found James Holmes guilty of murder in the deaths of 12 people at an Aurora, Colorado theater.

In addition to the 12 people killed, 70 others were injured in the attack on the opening night of the movie “The Dark Knight Rises.”  Holmes had entered the theater in black body armor with his hair colored red in an apparent reference to the Joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis.

The jury rejected the claims of Holmes’ defense team that he has been overtaken by his schizophrenia and that he had no control over his actions that night.

However, prosecutors showed a very detailed plan for the attack that included the booby-trapping of his apartment with explosive devices in an apparently attempt to take out law enforcement after his assault on the theater.  The prosecutors claim the plans showed that while Holmes may indeed be mentally ill, he was fully aware of his actions the night of the attack.

Holmes showed no response as the jury found him guilty on all 165 charges against him.

The jury will now take a week off before coming back to determine if Holmes will spend life in prison or be sentenced to the death penalty.

Tennessee Pastor Forgives Man Who Murdered His Father

A Tennessee pastor is showing the true meaning of forgiveness and grace by forgiving the man who murdered his father 30 years ago.

Ron Hammer gunned down Wayne Robinson outside a Tennessee grocery store in 1986.  On Sunday, Hammer joined pastor Philip Robinson via Skype to talk about his conversion to Christ.  Hammer told New Vision Life Baptist Church that the forgiveness of Pastor Robinson “changed his life.”

“I gave my life to Christ in October of 1996, but I’ve never really received the full blessings that Christ wanted me to have until one day He whispered and told me, ‘Well, you haven’t confessed to the Robinson family.’ And I sat and wrote a letter to Mrs. Robinson (pastor’s mother) and it was 20 years after the crime had taken place. And I told [her] how I had taken your father’s life and how it was an accident and that I never meant to hurt anyone,” said Hammer to Robinson before his congregation on Sunday

Hammer had denied being the gunman for years.

Originally Robinson admitted he had trouble forgiving Hammer.

“I wanted them to pay the full price for their crime,” said Robinson. “A great deal of my life was hanging on their conviction. It felt that way. I figured they would do it again.”

When Hammer reached out 13 years later, Robinson found a path to forgiveness, sending a letter to Hammer that was life changing.

“That letter from you, Phillip, truly touched me,” Hammer told the pastor in front of his congregation. “The words of wisdom and what God had planted in your heart to tell me changed my life that day. I’m so blessed by the forgiveness that you have given me.”

Robinson and his mother even testified in favor of Hammer at a parole hearing that resulted in his release from prison in March.

Grand Jury Formally Indicts Baltimore Officers

A grand jury in Baltimore has indicted six officers on charges connected to the Freddie Gray situation that led to massive rioting.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the grand jury’s decision to bring charges against all the officers during a Thursday press conference.  The indictments were similar to charges Mosby announced earlier this month but a few changed due to what she called “new information in the case.”

“These past two weeks, my team has been presenting evidence to a grand jury that just today returned indictments against all six officers,” Mosby told reporters. “As our investigation has continued, additional information has been discovered, and as is often the case during an ongoing investigation, charges can and should be revised based upon the evidence.”

The officers will be formally charged on July 2nd.

The Washington Post reports that Gray had an extensive criminal record “and had a handful of convictions, mostly on charges of selling or possessing heroin or marijuana. His longest stint behind bars was about two years.”

Gray’s death sparked nationwide protests and calls for the officers to be charged with murder.

American Blogger Killed In Bangladesh For Criticizing Islam

An American blogger who was critical of Islam was killed by Muslims who attacked in a “knife-wielding mob.”

Avijit Roy, who was an atheist, was attacked for promoting secularism and pointing out the violence and brutality of Islamic extremism.

“Avijit Roy has been killed the way other free thinker writers were killed in Bangladesh. No freethinker is safe in Bangladesh,” blogger Taslima Nasreen, who left Bangladesh in the mid-1990s after receiving death threats from extremists, told the Christian Post about the killing.

“Islamic terrorists can do whatever they like. They can kill people with no qualms whatsoever.”

BBC News reported that Bangladeshi officials for their role in the murder are now investigating a local Islamist group.

This is not the first time Islamists have attacked bloggers for being critical of Islam.  In 2013, one atheist blogger was brutally killed and a second survived a severe beating at the hands of Muslim mob.