Villagers protest police harassment
According to police they are working swiftly to crack the shocking case of murder and robbery on the Hummingbird Highway. But residents from the villages surrounding Belmopan have another view. Patrick Jones reports from National Police Headquarters.
It was a testy crowd of close to two hundred residents of the refugee communities of Salvapan and Las Flores that picketed police headquarters in Belmopan this afternoon. The protestors were up in arms over the detention, since Sunday, of a number of their relatives on suspicion of being involved with the May second Hummingbird Highway murder and hold-up of hundreds of motorists.
Milagro Varela
“What we want is that they come out. It is not fare for them to pay for something that they have not done.”
According to Milagro Varela, whose sixty-nine year-old common-law husband Jose Pastor Leiva is among those detained, the police are barking up the wrong tree.
Milagro Varela
“The police have put charges of robbery and also that he is one of the robbers of the Hummingbird Highway robbery. To be honest, we do not know that area. How can he be a thief, when everybody knows him that he is a hard working person? They covered his face with a cap and he was beaten by the police in order for him to confess. But what we have is because we have worked hard together and we don’t know where the robbers are. They are not here.”
Varela says the jewelry and cash that was confiscated can be accounted for as the family has relatives in the United States who frequently send them money and other items.
Leiva’s Daughter
“They send him money, jewelry? all of those were sent.”
Police would not say what, if any charges will be brought against any of the men, but shortly after three o’clock this afternoon, a group of about ten were shipped out in a Dragon Unit van, destination unknown. Following a meeting late this evening with Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security Carlos Perdomo, P.U.P. standard bearer for Cayo South Agripino Cawich, informed the gathering of mostly women, that all but ten of the detainees were to be released, as they had been in custody for over seventy two hours. As to charges brought against those still in custody, the police were unable to say. Patrick Jones, for News Five.
A release from the Human Rights Commission of Belize has accused the police of violating the detainees’ constitutional rights against unlawful detention. The H.R.C.B. is also concerned that several detainees may have been subjected to torture, which is prohibited by both our constitution as well as a UN Convention which has been signed by Government.
