Ciudad Juarez Driver Sentenced in 8 Killings

A bus driver was sentenced to 50 years in prison Wednesday for murdering eight women in this border city, where hundreds of women have been killed in similar crimes.

Victor Garcia Uribe -- alias El Cerillo, or “The Match” -- said he was tortured into making what appeared to be a rehearsed videotaped confession later shown on television.

His co-defendant, Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, also a bus driver, died in 2003 in police custody, and Gonzalez’s lawyer was shot to death by police in 2002 in what they said was a case of mistaken identity.

The bodies of eight women were found in a vacant lot in Ciudad Juarez in 2001. Suspicion focused on bus drivers because many of the victims had last been seen boarding or waiting for buses.

However, Garcia’s lawyer, Sergio Dante Almaraz, said that “both of them were arrested without warrants and tortured into confessing to the crimes.” He said he would file an appeal.

Since 1993, more than 300 women have been killed in similar attacks, with most strangled and left in the desert.

Activists accuse police not only of torturing suspects, but of contaminating and falsifying evidence and harassing victims’ relatives. Most believe the real killers have not been caught.

Little physical evidence has been produced at the trials.

Although police have arrested more than a dozen people, only one other man has been convicted: Egyptian chemist Abdel Latif Sharif, who prosecutors said had paid others to continue the killings while he was in jail.

Garcia’s conviction “is another insult to law enforcement, because everyone knows, it has been proved, that he confessed under torture,” said Marisela Ortiz of the nonprofit group Bring Our Daughters Home. “This just causes more distrust.”