Suspects in Ayotzinapa Case Say They Were Tortured

Suspects in the disappearance of 43 Mexican college students have claimed that they were tortured into making confessions, according to court documents obtained by the the U.S. international news agency Associated Press.

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Ten suspects said that they were first interrogated, then received punches, followed by jolts of electric shocks and partial asphyxiations with plastic bags; then, finally, threats to kill their loved ones, AP reported.

"They were giving me electric shocks in the testicles and all over my body," one of the suspects, Patricio Reyes Landa, a gang member who was detained a month after the students vanished, told a judge in July, the documents say. "All this time, it was about two and a half hours, I was blindfolded and they were hitting me.”

The report also overlaps with findings by a team of experts from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which expressed deep concern over the use of torture in acquiring confessions and testimony of the accused.

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The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group said that a study of 17 of the approximately 110 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings.

The IACHR group reviewed five, and it found credible evidence of torture in all cases.

According to both international and Mexican law, the use of torture in acquiring confessions or information renders the results of that information invalid.

Mexican police and soldiers have regularly been accused of using torture in interrogations.