On July 20th, 38 year old Stann Creek residents Jose Alvarado Sr. and 17 year old Jose Jr. were murdered. Police arrested four men: Jose Aleman, Noel Guerra, Hector Lopez and Ebeher Sosa. Aleman was the son in law to Jose Alvarado and brother in law to the younger Alvarado.
It was a case quickly wrapped up by Dangriga Police with the assistance of CIB officers from Belize City who elicited a confession from Aleman. Case closed? Not quite. Jose Aleman's family claims that the confession was beaten out of him. Their complaints prompted an internal affairs investigation which examined the conduct of Superintendent Chester Williams and other officers in his team. That investigation went to the DPP's office which sent a memo that further IAD investigations were needed and reportedly directed that charges are to be brought against Williams, another senior officer along with at least 4 other lower ranking officers.
But police have done nothing, and today Roberto Aleman the brother of the accused Jose Aleman visited our offices to tell us that the family is prepared to seek judicial review to force the police to obey a third memo from the DPP's office.
Roberto Aleman, Brother of Alleged Victim
"If the DPP sent the instruction to the police to arrest these people, why do they have to wait for us to get a lawyer and go to the Supreme Court to make the law come out. If it was anybody else, they would have been a hurry to charge. The evidence is on the table, the DPP's office has the evidence, the police know they did it so. All the work is already done so I don't understand how the government invested money to do an investigation and at the end of the day they are afraid to arrest this police.
We want to see these people go to court like anyone else because what they did, they played with the life of this boy. If he had any sickness, he would have died right there. They told him that he had to say 'this and this' and if he forgot something, they took him back in the room to beat him up again. When they had everything ready and he already had it on his mind, they took him from the room where they beat him. They didn't only brutalize him, they put innocent people in jail.
This is not a problem only for my family, this is a problem for the whole Belizean people because if we left this and make it stay like this, more Belizean people will continue to be brutalized by the police so we have to try and make this stop. If as Belizean people we don't stand up right now and start to complain about this situation, the problem continue."
The Aleman family has retained Dangiga-based human rights attorney Antonette Moore.
