Death squads said to target youths

VILLA NUEVA, Guatemala -- Thirteen-year-old Kevin García and his friends were playing soccer on a sunny afternoon last October when a white Isuzu Trooper without license plates screeched to a halt alongside the barrio's cheek-by-jowl cinderblock and tin shanties, neighbors say. Armed men in unmarked black uniforms and sunglasses leaped out and ordered the teenagers to the ground.

Kevin screamed for help, residents recall, and a female neighbor hollered, ''For the love of God, don't take that boy, he doesn't owe anything to anyone!"

Residents say one of the men pointed a gun at the woman, but let go of Kevin. His three friends, ages 15, 16, and 18, were kicked and bundled into the vehicle.

The next day, their lifeless bodies were discovered 30 miles away, bound and strangled, showing signs of torture, according to local newspapers.

Tabloids have oozed over the last year with photos of numerous unsolved murders of young men from this violent satellite town a half-hour's drive south of Guatemala City. Social workers and human rights activists attribute such slayings in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to alleged bands of rogue police, private security officers, or former security forces who are targeting suspected gangs that have fed violence in Central America.

Casa Alianza, a regional advocacy group for street children, recorded 2,028 slayings of youths in Honduras alone from January 2002 through February 2006, one of the highest murder rates of young people in the world. Police were responsible for 13 percent of the deaths investigated by a special government unit. A total of 42 percent of cases, according to Casa Alianza, had characteristics of summary executions.

The US State Department last month cited extrajudicial killings by police, vigilantes, or former members of security forces as the leading human rights violation in both Honduras and Guatemala. Extrajudicial executions are rarely investigated, and perpetrators are almost never prosecuted, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

In 2003, Honduras's then-President Ricardo Maduro created special bodies to investigate the killings, but in two years, only a handful of perpetrators have been convicted.

In Guatemala, the problem of alleged ''social cleansing" of suspected gang members is on the rise. Youth worker Elubia Velásquez says she knows of 20 suspected gang members who were kidnapped and killed in Villa Nueva alone last year, including a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old boy who were found with their lips sliced off. The internal affairs department of the Guatemalan police investigated 24 reports of police involvement in killings last year.

This February, Guatemala's human rights prosecutor Sergio Morales announced he had information pointing to the participation of police and security forces in death squads targeting youths. Top officials, including Vice President Eduardo Stein, acknowledge that vigilante killings may occur, but vehemently deny such activities are sanctioned by the state.

The death squads sometimes have the backing of community members fed up with extortion and harassment by delinquents, and tired of waiting for the government to clean up their barrios, youth workers say.

Roberto Blum, a visiting political scientist at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City, said citizens are frustrated with a law enforcement and judicial system where impunity reigns. Fewer than 3 percent of crimes committed in Guatemala end in convictions, he said. ''Here, crime does pay."

Some law enforcement officials here privately scoff at complaints about vigilante justice in high-crime barrios, saying the gang members are not wayward teens but hardened criminals who are beyond rehabilitation.

Fernando Herrera, president of Villa Nueva's community crime prevention council, rejects any suggestions of a connection between citizens concerned about violence and vigilantism. ''The government blames any murder on 'gangs settling scores' and they don't bother to investigate."

Emilio Goubaud, director of a nonprofit, US-funded organization dedicated to rehabilitating Guatemalan gang members, believes police in Villa Nueva were behind the slaying of 19 of his program's participants between November 2002 and February 2003. Fearful that rogue authorities would kill even more members, he shut down his operation here.

Kevin García's mother, Esperanza de García, shudders at the memory of almost losing her son last fall. Although neighbors say one of Kevin's older brothers is a gang member, she insists Kevin is an innocent bystander. ''As a mother, I don't even want my sons to go to the corner shop because police might take them . . . for the simple fact of being young and male."