The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) has initiated its first process with the United States as a defendant in the death of a Mexican migrant, Anastasio Hernandez, killed by U.S. immigration agents in 2010 in San Diego.
The victim’s relatives are demanding «truth and justice» after the case was closed in 2015 despite the fact that there were videos and witnesses proving that Hernandez was beaten to death.
The U.S. maintains that there was an investigation «by experienced federal prosecutors who determined that the evidence was insufficient to bring criminal charges.»
However, Maria Puga, Anastasio’s wife, has told the IACHR commissioners that she learned from an officer that her partner was in the hospital, brain dead, on May 29, 2010, but «no one explained to us what had happened.» «I found out the details later, on the day of his funeral,» she said. When she was at home, on a television «a video began to be broadcast, I heard my husband’s cries of pain.»
Two years later, when she had access to a second video, «I saw the images of how my husband was surrounded by agents, beating him, torturing him.» «They tasered him, humiliated him, took off his clothes,» she said. There were about thirteen subjects who assaulted him and it is presumed that they were agents of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Puga explained that by asking the IACHR for a review of the case she is seeking that «the officers involved and the government apologize to the family for having murdered my husband, that there be changes in these policies of use of force that have caused so much suffering».
During the hearing, representatives of Anastasio’s family, the International Human Rights Legal Clinic of the University of Berkeley and Alliance San Diego have denounced the «cover-up» of the U.S. authorities.
They indicated that although the victim did not pose a security threat to the agents, they used disproportionate force. «The United States has neither refuted nor responded to these allegations. In fact, it attempts to justify the agents’ use of force and the Justice Department’s decision to terminate the criminal investigation by arguing that Anastasio was combative and assaultive.»
Thomas Hastings, acting U.S. representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), has stressed that they have differences of opinion about the IACHR admitting this case. The government in an agreement «paid one million dollars (to the family) to resolve any claims for the acts or omissions that gave rise to the case,» he recalled.
