Impunity in Mexico

Peter Orsi of the Associated Press reports:

The vast majority of human rights abuses allegedly committed by soldiers waging Mexico's war on drug gangs go unsolved and unpunished despite reforms letting civilian authorities investigate and prosecute such crimes, a report said Tuesday. 

The Washington Office on Latin America study, described as the first comprehensive analysis of military abuse investigations handled by the Attorney General's Office, found there were just 16 convictions of soldiers in the civilian judicial system out of 505 criminal investigations from 2012 through 2016, a prosecutorial success rate of 3.2 percent. 

Moreover, there were only two "chain of command responsibility" convictions for officers whose orders led to abuses, it said. 

The report said factors that hinder civilian investigations of the military include parallel civilian and military probes, limited access to troops' testimony and soldiers tampering with crime scenes or giving false testimony. 

"This militarized public security model has negatively impacted Mexico's criminal justice system. The civilian justice system faces challenges — including military authorities' actions resulting in the obstruction or delay of investigations — which limit civilian authorities' ability to sanction soldiers implicated in crimes and human rights violations," the group said.