Mexico Moving to Curb Police Torture : Human rights: President Salinas proposes new legal reforms that would limit use of confessions in court.

In an effort to combat police torture, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on Tuesday proposed important reforms in the Mexican legal system that would limit the use of confessions from suspected criminals in court.

Mexican and international human rights groups, as well as U.S. officials, have denounced the use of torture by police to extract confessions, particularly in drug trafficking cases. The National Human Rights Commission, appointed by Salinas last June, had proposed the changes.

“This is a step toward answering what has been one of the most pressing demands of the population: the just and equal application of the law for all,” Salinas said.

“We will not only maintain our energetic actions in the fight against drug trafficking, we will reinforce them,” he added. “But we will do so without violating human rights and individual guarantees.”

Under the proposal that Salinas said he will submit to the Mexican Congress, interrogations would be carried out by lawyers from the attorney general’s office rather than by federal police.

Confessions alone would no longer be sufficient to convict a suspect. Only confessions made in the presence of a defense attorney would be legal evidence.

“When you reduce the value of a confession, this eliminates any reason for torture,” said Luis Ortiz Monasterio, administrator of the Human Rights Commission.

Carlos Payan, editor of the leftist La Jornada newspaper and considered an independent member of the government commission, said: “This is a fundamental change. The confession was fundamental.”

Salinas also said that an arrest warrant would be required before a suspect could be detained. A person illegally arrested would have to be freed.

The president vowed to revamp the federal attorney general’s office and to professionalize its police force, the Federal Judicial Police, which is responsible for fighting drug trafficking. His proposal includes drug testing for federal police, but does not mention higher salaries. Several police and human rights officials say the problems of torture, extortion and corruption are due in part to the fact that police are underpaid.

Last week Salinas removed the deputy attorney general in charge of anti-narcotics police, Javier Coello Trejo, and replaced him with a general coordinator for narcotics investigations, Jorge Carrillo Olea.

During Coello Trejo’s two-year tenure, the anti-narcotics police had come under fire from human rights groups.

The timing of these changes appears to be threefold: Salinas is due to give his annual “state of the nation” speech on Nov. 1, recapping the achievements of the past year; his Human Rights Commission is scheduled to issue its first report on Dec. 1 (human rights groups have been waiting until then to pass judgment on the seriousness of the commission), and several political observers say Salinas is trying to clean up his government’s rights record before entering into complicated free trade negotiations with the United States.

U.S. groups opposed to a free trade agreement are expected to focus attention on rights abuses.

But attention to the problem already had been growing. In June, the U.S.-based Americas Watch human rights group issued a tough report on violations.

“Torture is endemic in Mexico,” the report said. “ . . . It is a law enforcement technique that is used to extract confessions and, in some cases, to extort money from prisoners or their families.”

Americas Watch and other rights groups have documented incidents in which people brought in for questioning by the police have died as the result of torture.

Last month, in hearings before a U.S. House foreign relations subcommittee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sally G. Cowal said that “although we (the U.S. government) fully support and appreciate the Mexican government’s efforts to combat drug trafficking, we consider mistreatment and abuse of suspects to obtain confessions intolerable.”

Torture already is illegal in Mexico, and some human rights activists have said the main problem has been the government’s lack of commitment to enforcing the law.