At the end of December Roberto Aleman visited our studios in a desperate attempt to get his brother Jose Aleman out of prison. Jose Aleman was accused of orchestrating and participating in the murder and robbery of his father in law and brother in law. But the Alemans allege that a murder confession was beaten out of him. They aggressively pursued what they felt was a wrongful accusation, taking their complaint to any authority that would hear them.
Well, the news tonight is that it paid off. Accused killer Jose Aleman is a free man. On Friday of last week he along with another of 4 accused, Hector Lopez was released from prison. This came after the Director of Public Prosecutions sent a memo to the police in Dangriga to set them free.
The police remain convinced that he set up what were very brutal killings of his wife's father and brother, but today he gave us his side of the story: he says that everything was fabricated and obtained through brutality.
Jose Aleman,
"Everything which the police accused me of and got, everything they said and everything they think, I didn't confess to anything. The forced me to make me sign it, the two police and most of them from Dangriga. Nothing I confessed to them, everything is what they said. From Friday they started to torture me and up to Sunday they tortured me and we got some evidence for me to show you the torture that they did to me. They handcuffed me, they put a cloth in my mouth, taped it, and then they gave me a cap, a bag, and they used to stand up on my bag between the handcuffs that they used to have on my hand and they used to tell me in front of my face, they told me that they could hang me from my testicles and anything they could do up to kill me."
Alfonso Noble,
Are you still looking to get that done, to have these policemen who brutalized you charged?
Jose Aleman,
"Sure I will go up to the end and I think they violated all the human rights because from the start I explained to them and they didn't believe me and they started to torture me. I hope the same way how the law helped them, I hope the law helps me for all what they did to me, make them pay."
Throughout his incarceration, Aleman's wife had steadfastly supported his innocence despite the fact that he was charged with masterminding the murder of her father and brother. While Aleman is now free, former DPP Kirk Anderson had instructed police to charge senior police investigators for the harm of Aleman. But the statute bar to bring those charges elapsed in January.
