GayNZ.com Daily News has learned that a 20-year old man was arrested the day after the shooting at a gay bar in Xalapa and has pled guilty the massacre. The family of this young man however, have claimed that the authorities forced a confession out of him using torture. 20-year-old Gabriel Alfredo Martinez Godos Mexican news outlet Sin Embargo reported late May that the accused, Gabriel Alfredo Martinez Godos was arrested without a warrant by members of the Ministerial Police on Monday 23 May, the day after the massacre. Martinez Godos testifies that he was forced under torture to admit to the mass shooting at La Madame gay bar that left at least seven dead and twelve injured. Some put the death toll at fifteen. According to Martinez Godos, the police may have taken his fingerprints and DNA from a beer can he drank from. He says authorities also threatened to kill both him and his family. The mother of the accused, Rosalba Godos Gomez, says her son was forced under threat and physical torture to incriminate himself. She told Blogexpediente during a telephone interview that her son was held from the night of Monday 23 May to the afternoon of Thursday 26 May without being able to communicate with the outside world. “By the time he was allowed to talk a little, the Public Prosecutor had already presented him as guilty, but my son is all bruised, they hit him a lot and harmed him psychologically so that he would plead guilty to all of those deaths,” she says. “I saw he was limping, walking really slowly. He told me that they had been hitting him from the moment in which they shoved him and another guy into the police vehicle in ‘Plaza Cristal’ shopping mall. We’ve heard nothing of the other guy so far.” “My son says that before the police identified themselves, they were saying they were a criminal Cartel group, and that [unless] he pleaded guilty to the deaths they would kill him and his family” she says, adding that “He was presented to the Public Prosecutor with clothes that were not his, they put some other clothes on him. And he looks like he has been hit many times all over his body.” She told Blogexpediente she believes her son, who she says was handing out CVs and applying for jobs on the day of his arrest, was chosen because he is weak and they would have been looking for someone to grab. People protesting Martinez Godo's arrest On the day of the attack she says her son was at home looking after her as she is ill. She pointed out that her son had never been detained before, which means he has no legal antecedents. It is clear to her that her son is being used as a scapegoat, as in many other cases, which according to her, the State's General Attorney solves unusually fast. She commented that at the time of the interview, her son had already had his first court appearance and was forced to declare his guilt again. The lawyer says that his client’s testimony, stating that he had been tortured and hit in order to confess, does not appear in the recorded files. Sin Embargo reports that the prosecutor in the case, Luis Angel Contreras, told a news conference that they found Martinez Godos because of an Identikit picture sketch based on the testimony of the survivors. He reportedly gave no information regarding the methods employed to find and detain the subject in question. Martinez Godos’ family are willing to appeal to the defense of Human Rights to seek protection, and demand a parallel investigation to demonstrate the deficiencies of the contents of the case. Above all, they demand that the CEDH (State Commission of Human Rights) intervene so that the Istanbul Protocol - an official UN document that is the Manual on Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment - and the physical and psychological abuse is acknowledged and proved. They are prepared to take this to a national level should the President of the State Commission of Human Rights, Namiko Matsumoto be unassuming of her role as ombudsman. The La Madame Case would have been resolved in record time, just like other cases in which there is presumed ‘fabrication of perpetrators’ says news outlet Sin Embargo. Martinez Godos is on remand in prison for a year until the case is resolved. His lawyer, Francisco David Espinonsa Jacome, told Veracruz news outlet e-consultation that there are several legal anomalies in the process that began at the time of his client’s arrest.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 18th June 2016 - 1:06pm