Mexican authorities tortured a Texan who was imprisoned in Juárez on a drug trafficking conviction, officials with the U.S. Justice Department said.
The Justice Department’s Parole Division released 24-year-old Shohn Huckabee after the torture allegations came to light, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Huckabee, a resident of El Paso, and Carlos Quija were arrested in December 2009 near a border crossing when Mexican soldiers found two suitcases stuffed with 110 pounds of marijuana in his truck, the Journal reported. The two men had been in Mexico to have Huckabee’s truck repaired, according to the El Paso Times.
Under a bilateral treaty, Huckabee was transferred from Mexican prison to U.S. custody in September. He was released from La Tuna federal prison last Friday after serving 26 months of his five-year sentence last Friday. Quijas remains in Mexico for now.
“The men say they were then taken to the military base, where they were beaten, subjected to electric shocks and threatened with death,” Nicholas Casey wrote in the Journal. American authorities have held that the suitcases were planted after the vehicle was stopped.
“Huckabee always had the option of transferring to a U.S. prison. He opted to stay in Mexico and fight his case to prevent having the offense appear on his criminal record,” Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera wrote in the El Paso Times. Now his criminal record will contain the blemish “felony in a foreign country.”
Commenter “Bobby Bag-O’Donuts” faulted the El Paso Times for not examining U.S. Congressman Silvestre Reyes’ disinterest in Huckabee’s case. “Guess the EL Paso Times forgot to mention that our Congressman Sylvester {sic} Reyes was completely uninterested and absolutely no help in this matter,” he wrote.
“Seems like we have a lot of people walking around saying it is safe over {in Mexico}. All the people need to know it is not a country you need to be in right now.“ asked Maximino R. Rivera, a special education teacher in El Paso.
