A prosecutor in the Dominican Republic has filed charges against five policemen and a naval officer for the murder of two men in 2009, in what Amnesty International is describing as a key case that points to the pressing need for radical police reform in the country.
On 19 January the Prosecutor’s office in the northwestern province of Montecristi filed the charges against the officers for killing William de Jesus Checo and Cecilio Diaz, who were shot dead on 10 October 2009.
Amnesty International has campaigned for justice for the men’s killings, and raised the case in a meeting with the Attorney General late last year.
On 10 October 2009, the officers, who have now been charged, allegedly shot Checo and Diaz dead in Copey, Villa Vasquez in Montecristi province. According to the police, they were both wanted in connection with the kidnapping of Eduardo Baldera Gomez, a young man who had gone missing a month earlier in the northeastern town of Nagua.
The National Police claimed that the two men were killed in a shoot-out between gang members and the responding officers, but an investigation launched by the Attorney General in November 2009 refuted that claim, concluding that the large number of gunshots fired at both victims and their trajectory indicated that the alleged exchange of gunfire did not take place and that there was intent to kill the two men.
www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20588