My name is Ángel Amílcar Colón Quevedo. I am former president of an organization in Honduras representing the Garifuna people, who in 2001 were declared by UNESCO as a heritage group.

Honduras is going through an economic crisis. Because of the violence, the seizure of lands in communities, and another whole series of events, there has been migration from Honduras northwards to the U.S. and also to Europe, mainly Spain and Italy. Those are the reasons why I had to migrate from Honduras at that time. Because of the cancer that had struck my son, and that eventually killed him, I left Honduras on January 7, 2009, headed for the United States in order to earn money and try to find some way to be able to get my son out of the country so they could operate on him.

On March 9, 2009, the police detained me in Tijuana in a building where I presented myself as a former president of an Honduran association. The state police at that time, when they held me, connected me with this black organization, a criminal group in Mexico, and identified me also with a group of narco-traffickers. I was asked on a number of occasions whether I was a leader. I said, yes, I am the ex-president of OFRANEH, and I'm headed for New York.

First, a number of individuals kicked me, and then they punched me. I was further struck as I walked up a small hill. They kicked me in the shins and the knees. They took me to the police station and held me in preventive detention. I was held 20 minutes, and I was taken out of the building towards the city. Then I was brought back, and once again they beat me up. They gave me to the federal detention centre, where I was held in a room, an office. Then I had to go to the bathroom, which was covered with blood. I was sat down, and they continued to beat me.

I had cuffs on my hands and feet, I was lying on the ground, and they put a bag over my head to try to asphyxiate me. They questioned me. They wanted me to give them information on who I was delivering drugs to in the city. They wanted to know the names of people who worked for me, who bought the drugs from me, and how I got the drugs into Mexico. They wanted to know how I worked all of this and how I managed to get through Central America. They wanted me to tell them about all the various locations we had laboratories—in Colombia, for example—and they wanted information on the number of people involved.

I said, “How can I tell you about things I don't know?” But they continued to hit me. I said, “Tell me what you want me to say and I'll cooperate, but I really don't know anything of what you're asking me.” For a little while they left me alone. Then in a parking lot, shirtless, I was thrown onto the pavement. They dragged me and took me to an office of the attorney general of Mexico, where I was held for four hours. I asked the public prosecutor whether I could make a call to the embassy of Honduras, and I was told I had no rights, no right to a call.

He denied me the call, and I was transferred to the second military zone. That was roughly between four and five in the afternoon. From 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. next, they had me in a little room where people came and went. My wrists and my ankles were tied together. They had me lying down on the ground, and once again they put a bag over my head. There was somebody sitting on my knees. Sometimes there was somebody standing on my back and somebody else jumping on my stomach in order to try to get the air out of my lungs. So they jumped and they put the bag on my head while they jumped on me. Since I wasn't telling them what they really wanted to know and find out, they then put a towel over my face and they threw a lot of water over my face. When I tried to breathe, of course, I was choking on the water that they were throwing over me.

There were more than 60 people detained at that time who were also being tortured. I witnessed how they were also tortured by electric prods. There was a lot of yelling and shouting and crying, and many people defecated in their pants. It was total pestilence in there. It stank. Prior to that, I was also put into a room where there were a number of other detainees also cuffed at the wrists and ankles, and a great number of military personnel. My torture continued because they were accusing certain people of being homosexuals and wanted to see sexual acts. They made me take off my shirt and I had to clean the shoes of other detainees whose shoes were covered in blood. They were playing what we call “the blind rooster” with me. They were asking me to do military positions, which I was unaware of. Everybody laughed at me, and even other detainees were also laughing at the spectacle.

They treated me wrong. The passport didn't have a visa in it, but I had my bank book with me as well. I had $5,000 cash in my pocket and they stole all of that from me. From all of my belongings, nothing was declared by those who detained me and jailed me.

Then they took me out of the second military zone and they took me to a private residence belonging to los AFI, and they said that here they were going to be holding me, but there was a confrontation in the parking lot between the attorney general's investigating agents and the police, and then I was transferred to the 48th battalion where I was held for 40 days. They said that they were going to bring me to Mexico City and I would be held for another 40 days at the detention centre in Mexico. Then afterwards they brought me to the maximum security prison, Nayarit, and I was detained there. The bad treatment continued in the jail and I denounced this treatment.

My family heard from me only after I had been detained for 18 months and had requested information from the State of Honduras. I found out that my son, in the meantime, had died, my mother had died, my oldest nephew had also died, an aunt of mine had died in the meantime. During all of my detention, I was not allowed to make phone calls. The letters I wrote were not allowed to leave. In fact, they were seized.

Organizations learned about me because I wrote, through other people, to London and to Amnesty International, because I had some friends who were detainees, and their wives got the information from the Internet on Amnesty International. I wrote a letter and somebody brought it to London, and Amnesty International contacted me through their offices in Mexico and other allied organizations.

Of course, this is how I also came into contact with the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center in Mexico. I said that I had no money to pay for lawyers, because lawyers were charging up to $100,000 for defence and, of course, I didn't have that kind of money.

After all of these events I tried to set up a defence process, but I knew that my own public defender, who had been present in torture sessions at 2 o'clock in the morning in the centre, appeared at 8 o'clock in the morning as my defender, so I couldn't trust my lawyers. I went through five public defenders, because instead of defending me, they were doing what the public prosecutor's office was asking them to do. I denounced the various tortures I had undergone and the public prosecution didn't really want to set up a process for me.

After some four years since I had denounced their torture, and thanks to the report that we made to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez undertook to visit me and set up a report on me. Only then did the Mexican state initiate an investigation of my torture.

Today justice has taken place with my liberation, but it doesn't end there. My court case against the Mexican state is on hold because they never wanted to apply the Istanbul Protocol. They were accusing me and saying, according to the information taken by the police agents, that those people aware of the facts were no longer part and parcel of the process. They had checked my hands for gunpowder residue. They were sure that I had fired a weapon. They said that I was using weapons. They said there were also drugs in my possession, and they wanted me to show the drugs, and they said that my fingerprints were on these bags. They took my fingerprints and they found that they were not actually present on the bags. My fingerprints were different.

An expert came and took dictation in a book and compared my handwriting with the letters supposedly written in a number of transaction books for drugs and once again they noted that my handwriting was not the same as that found in their log books. Therefore, none of the accusations showed that there was a link between me and all of these other events they claimed I was involved in.

The police were actually shooting the night I was held, and they never really assessed to see whether any bullets were fired outside the building from within, or whether the shots were fired into the building from outside.

I ask Canada and the Canadian people to support me in my attempt to reveal the truth and to obtain justice, because the humanitarian crisis in Mexico today is enormous.

The investigation on my case is being held up because the Mexican army doesn't want to provide information on who was in charge that evening.

On damage reparations, I will leave the details to my lawyer. He can speak to this.

Thank you very much.

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