Federal Investigation Opened For American’s Accusations That He Was Tortured In Mexico

Many reports circulate about people being tortured in Mexico on a regular basis, mostly due to the presence of and intimidation by drug cartels, and many people live in fear.

A lot of those reports are also full of references to them sometimes being tortured in Mexico by the authorities who work with many of those cartels, giving the impression of corruption at every level.

Such is the case with American Ronald James Wooden, an artisan whose story of being severely beaten for four hours by corrupt police officers is beginning to see the light of day, according to The Associated Press.

The story goes that Ronald had moved to a silver-mining city of Taxco to open up a workshop, where he could forge large pieces into smaller jewelry pieces, and in 2013, municipal police arrested him for belligerence and drunkenness.

But he denies this and claims that as soon as he set up shop there, he was harassed by his neighbor to pay for monthly protection. The man was allegedly connected to the local cartels and was a retired officer.

Ronald says that when police arrived, they did not hesitate to torture him, and when they cuffed him, they stood on the cuffs, damaging his hands. Since the vicious assault, he has had limited feeling in his hands.

As with many cities in Mexico, Taxco specifically has some history of gruesome discoveries.

In one horrifying incident, fifty rotting bodies were found in a ventilation shaft back in 2010, and the discovery, along with similar crimes, was linked to a local cartel gang called Guerreros Unidos.

The current acting mayor of Taxco is Salomón Majul González, who Fusion names as one of three officials being investigated by the Ministry of the Interior for the connection to many crimes in the city.

Human rights groups say police torture remains all too common in Mexico, but American's case from 2013 is unusual. https://t.co/MgLrA3FzM5

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 13, 2016

Other signs of Ronald being tortured in Mexico were the bruises, scrapes, and cuts documented after the governmental Human Rights Defense Commission initiated a probe into the Taxco police, where they were given conflicting statements, and they discovered Ronald had been illegally detained.

He states that when he was being tortured for four hours, some of the officials would get tired and were replaced with others who would continue to beat him, leaving him with broken ribs and injuries to his spine and genitals.

In the video, James explains that he arrived at his workshop, where he parked his truck in a public spot, and he was told to move it.

He says he refused to and said he would only move it after he finished unloading his materials.

When the police arrived, he was immediately attacked, and when he tried to escape through another door, he was met with other officials who beat him into submission. He says that he didn’t feel any aggression towards them and didn’t fight back.

He says they took him down to the detention center and insulted his race, they stood on his genitals, and they used the vehicle door like a battering ram.

When they arrived at the center, about eight to ten officials continued to beat him for hours with rifle butts, batons, kicks, and punches. Then they put him over a table and told him they were going to shoot him, and that would be the last night he would be alive.

The Inquisitr wrote about a similar case in 1989 when Mark J. Kilroy, a student from The University of Texas at Austin visited Matamoros, Mexico. He was kidnapped and murdered as part of a cartel boss’ Satanic ritual sacrifice.There are other cases of Americans being murdered in Mexico in recent years. Many of them were tortured before being killed.

Ronald says they threatened to disappear him, and when he was finally released, Ronald and his wife fled to another region of Mexico.Since then, he has had difficulty returning to his work.

The Guerreros Unidos are also connected with the case in which 47 students went missing only a few years ago. It’s been reported that those students were handed over to that gang by officials, and they were killed and burned, making any attempts to identify their remains impossible.

TeleSUR is one of the sources reporting on the new autopsy findings on one of the students, 22-year-old Julio Cesar Mondragon, who had 64 fractures in 40 bones, mostly in his skull, face, and spine as proof that he had been tortured.

On June 30, after two years of no action, a federal judge ordered Mexico’s government to open a formal criminal investigation into what everyone agrees is evidence that Ronald was tortured in Mexico, which would be the first time federal action has been taken to punish those responsible.

[Image by Eduardo Verdugo/AP Photo]