Innocent Man Sentenced For Murder Of Brad Will

SCOOP reported on Brad Will's murder here

Oaxaca justice has condemned innocent APPO [i] man, Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno, for the murder of US Indymedia videographer Brad Will. He has been sentenced to prison by the judge of the Fifth Federal Court, Rosa Iliana Noriega Perez, for the murder of Will on October 26, 2006, although:

- Brad Will video-graphed his murderers running toward him carrying pistols;

- the two assailants shown in the video, Abel Zarate, registrar of Santa Lucia del Camino, and Oswaldo Manuel Aguilar Coello who was a municipal police officer, were arrested but subsequently released by government orders. Both are strongly tied to the PRI [ii];

- there was no evidence for accusing Juan Martinez Moreno, who was standing near, not facing, Brad Will when Will was shot;

- the "witnesses" in fact saw nothing - Feria Perez, the chief witness, admitted he merely repeated hearsay.

One of Martinez Moreno's lawyers noted that Judge Noriega Perez accepted that Martinez Moreno should be sentenced because his legal stays had expired, although nothing has been proved against him. [iii] The judge ordered that the testimony of the two witnesses, Alfredo Feria Perez, the nephew of the former PRI municipal president of Santa Lucia del Camino, and PRIista Carol Ivan Ilescas Resendiz, be accepted as fact, although Feria Perez had admitted, "he knew from comments made by others that Brad Will had been killed by an APPO activist". Who made that comment? It was the Attorney General of Oaxaca at the time, Lizbeth Cana Cadeza.

The frame-up is clearly the work of the Oaxaca government, in cahoots with the federal government. Their reason: money from the USA for Plan Merida would not be forthcoming if Brad Will's killer were not caught. This is the only one of the (at least) twenty-three homicides of APPO sympathizers in which someone has been indicted and judged guilty - but they got the wrong guy. All the deaths of the 2006 uprising against the APPO were the work of government death squads.

The court order terminates the suspense - at least for now - following four different judicial hearings and court stays preceding Martinez Moreno's latest sentence to imprisonment at Santa Maria Ixcotel, near Oaxaca City. His sentence has raised the ire of not only the APPO, but also the family of Brad Will, who have known for some time that a cover-up is in process.

Also outraged are clerical and civil groups. Mexican and USA clerics, 84 from the USA and 81 from Mexico, sent a letter to presidents Calderon and Obama, stating that the guilty verdict could only be "a justification and condition to accelerate the funds to Mexico to carry out Plan Merida."

In the letter, also sent to the Department of State of the USA, and to the Secretary of Government of Mexico, the clerics urge a review of the case, taking into account the recommendations of the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH in its Spanish initials) and international organizations which all discounted the idea that Martinez Moreno was involved in the killing.

The bias was so evident that the CNDH recommended that the case against Martinez Moreno be thrown out.

Martinez Moreno, a baker by trade, was arrested in October of 2008, two years after Will's death. The letter states, "Juan Manuel is not responsible for the crime he is accused of. And during the judicial process many grave irregularities are found which make the case unjust and illegal. And more than that, Juan Manuel's family and lawyers have been the objects of various pressures and intimidations....the more than 23 homicides of 2006 remain in absolute impunity and obviously there are no detained, only, surprisingly, Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno, accused of the death of the North American journalist. All the assassinated during the political conflict are Oaxaqueños, with the exception of Bradley Roland Will".

[i] APPO - Asamblea Popular de Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples’ of Oaxaca)

[ii] PRI – Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Revolutionary Institutional Party)

[iii] On 4th May SCOOP reported here http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0905/S00015.htm that Martinez had been “freed by a federal judge who observed that no evidence supported the charge against him, but rather pointed to the guilt of the people Will was filming at the time of his death, ie police and other government agents.” However, the Oaxaca authorities did not release him, but kept him incarcerated until his sentencing by another judge this week.

The source for this report is *Noticias*, Friday July 10, 2009 http://www.noticias-oax.com.mx/

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