US Parents Seek Answers in Mexico Death
Jessica Bernstein-Wax
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The parents of an American journalist slain in
southern Mexico said Wednesday they were unsatisfied with the progress
authorities have made in the case and will have outside investigators
review video footage and forensic evidence.
Bradley Roland Will, a 36-year-old journalist-activist from New York, was killed in October 2006 while filming unrest in Oaxaca state, where protesters had been fighting for months to oust Gov. Ulises Ruiz for alleged electoral fraud. Will recorded video and wrote dispatches for indymedia.org in the month before his death.
"It's been a year-and-a-half now," said father Hardy Will, who
traveled to Mexico City and Oaxaca with Bradley's mother Kathy Will to
meet with authorities and human rights groups. "We would expect some
progress and concrete results."
He said the couple met with investigators on Tuesday from the federal
Attorney General's office and officials there agreed to let four
experts from Physicians for Human Rights examine Will's autopsy,
various photographs, video footage and ballistics evidence.
The family is particularly interested in having them study the video
Will filmed of his own death to rule out a close-range shooting.
On the day of the killing, Will was videotaping a group of protesters
in the Oaxacan slum of Santa Lucia when a gunbattle erupted. Will was
shot in the abdomen and died before he reached the hospital.
Investigators arrested two town officials in the killing but released
them after state Attorney General Lizbeth Cana suggested Will may have
been shot by a protester standing near him.
"The hypothesis up to this point is that it was somebody next to Brad,
and we feel that is totally ridiculous," Kathy Will said.
A spokeswoman for Mexico's federal Attorney General's office, which
has taken over the case, said Wednesday it had no statement to make
about the investigation.
The National Human Rights Commission said 11 others died as a direct
result of the violent confrontations, which ravaged Oaxaca from May to
November 2006.
"He was killed in the exact same way as the others," Kathy Will said.
"We feel it's our duty to follow his path — to not allow him to be
another victim of exactly what he was trying to uncover."
One year after Brad's murder Bush/Calderon announced the proposal to
offer $1.5 Billion in USA military aid and surveillance equipment to
the very same people who killed him and numerous others. This would
reward the impunity of human rights violations.
The "Meridia
Initiative", known as "Plan Mexico" would include $60 million to the
very same federal prosecutor's office who seems to have covered up
Brad's and many murders in Oaxaca, Chiapas and Atenco. Members of the
nation-wide Friends of Brad Will have been stepping up a lobbying
campaign to impact Congress on this issue, with postcards, letters,
meetings, some havig been arrested during hearings in Washington, DC
on this matter.
For more information:
http://www.friendsofbradwill.org
