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Saturday, June 14, 2014

Text of 2014 changes to Mexican Code of Military Justice

The Mexican Congress's military justice reform decree was published in the Official Diary on June 13, 2014. The full text can be found here. A related statement, also in Spanish, by the Mexico City representative office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights appears here. Among other changes, human rights violations and other crimes committed by military personnel against civilians will now be subject to prosecution in the civil courts.

This article from Fox News Latino summarizes the changes made by the decree as follows:
The law, which took effect Saturday [June 14], states that military police will conduct investigations under the direction of civilian prosecutors and be required to offer assistance to victims and protection to witnesses.
They also will be tasked with arresting military suspects and immediately turning them over to civilian prosecutors.
Armed forces members who are accused of crimes against civilians may be held in pre-trial detention in military lockups when military authorities deem it necessary to protect their rights.
In such cases, military authorities will cooperate with the civilian courts to ensure the accused appears before the judicial authorities when summoned.
The law states that crimes committed by an armed forces member against a fellow soldier will be tried in military courts.
It also requires military courts to use the adversarial judicial model being adopted in Mexico to ensure presumption of innocence and protect soldiers' human rights.
Other provisions of the decree are summarized here

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