TELOLOAPAN, Mexico (AP) — Carlos Sanchez and his family had nearly completed the harrowing drive, hurtling along a dark and dangerous highway out of the mountains to a hospital when they collided with a state police truck parked across the highway lights out.

Before they knew what was happening, they were dragged from the car by uniformed police. Sanchez's wife, sister and cousin were loaded into the back of a police patrol truck. They would not see Sanchez, who hours earlier had been shot three times outside his home in Teloloapan, until they arrived at a walled compound in the mountains.

They had been kidnapped by police.
In April 2013, Sanchez and his cousin Armando de la Cruz Salinas became two more of Mexico's nearly 26,000 recorded disappearances since 2007. The abduction of 43 students from a rural teachers' college in the southern Mexico city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, by local police drew attention to a remarkable fact of life in Mexico: Police are responsible for many disappearances.

Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, told The Associated Press in August that municipal police had participated in scores of abductions around Iguala during the term of Mayor Jose Luis Abarca, who faces charges in the case of the 43 students.

Members of the extended Sanchez family agreed to speak about their missing on condition of anonymity. They wanted to tell the story of the violence that surrounds them like the air they breathe, and of police responsibility for many of what are now called "the other disappeared." But they are deathly scared of the captors and cops who still live among them and operate with impunity, returning at times to abuse or threaten those who might talk.
Sanchez, a 36-year-old taco vendor and father of three, had just returned home with his wife from the grocery store on the evening of April 2, 2013, when a white car pulled up. Two young men got out and confronted him. They tried to force him into the car, but he resisted, and they shot him three times before fleeing.

At the hospital in Teloloapan, a city of 55,000 high in the mountains of Guerrero's Tierra Caliente, staff bandaged Sanchez's wounds, gave him oxygen and an IV, but told his family there was no surgeon to operate. They said he had to go to Iguala for surgery and wrote a letter to that effect to ensure his passage through three military and police checkpoints on the highway between the two cities.

But the ambulance would only agree to carry Sanchez with an armed escort. Soldiers refused to provide one.

So after a private clinic in Teloloapan also refused Sanchez care, his cousin, Armando, volunteered to drive. They were en route to the hospital in Iguala when they fell into the hands of police.

At the abductors' compound, lit only by cellphone lights, the family quickly realized they were not alone. There were 15 to 20 other people sitting on the floor of a room blindfolded and tied at the wrists and ankles.

The police took their shoes, belts and anything of value, and pulled their shirts over their heads to obscure their vision, but the cellphone light shone through the thin material and so they saw when Sanchez was dragged in. He was naked except for the bandages, his paper hospital gown lost along the way.

They were surrounded by 10 to 15 men armed with rifles, most wearing the same dark state police uniform.

One kidnapper approached Sanchez with a notebook. He asked his name, where he was from, how many children he had, what he did. Sanchez answered every question. They beat him anyway, kicking and punching.
The man accused Sanchez of stealing horses from a ranch in Teloloapan. He said he had been to that ranch only to sell tacos to the masons who were building stables. He rattled off his list of taco varieties.

About six men pounced on Sanchez kicking him furiously. When they paused, he turned his face toward his wife, breathed deeply and said the name of his youngest son, Santiago. Then he closed his eyes.

The gunmen stuffed the taco vendor into an army green sleeping bag and carried him outside. The others heard his body land in the back of a truck. His cousin, Armando, was beaten too, and then led out of the house; he was never seen again. The two women were released after 10 days.

After news of the 43 disappeared students ignited the national firestorm, a neighbor who was searching for her son told the Sanchez family that relatives were gathering at a church in Iguala to file reports with federal authorities and give DNA samples.

They agreed to join hundreds of other families putting names on a list, many of whom also revealed stories of police taking their loved ones.

The families organized to go into the hills around Iguala to search for bodies of the disappeared. Over many weeks and months, government crews dug up the remains of at least 104 people from unmarked graves found by the families, only 13 of which have been identified by DNA and telltale bits of clothing — or by other articles.

In January, the Sanchez family was told that the gravediggers had unearthed a green sleeping bag with a skeleton inside. Next to it, they found an IV and an oxygen tube.

Russian ground crew are inscribing the words "For Paris" on some bombs destined to be dropped on targets in Syria, in a message of solidarity with the victims of last week's Paris attacks.

A video posted online by the Defence Ministry here also shows a serviceman writing "For Our Guys" on a bomb at Russia's Hmeymim airbase.

"Pilots and technicians of Hmeymim airbase have sent their message to terrorists by priority airmail," said a caption accompanying the post.

Russia has intensified strikes on Syrian militants, including from Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris and for downing a Russian airliner in Egypt last month, killing all 224 on board.

Russian politicians have said the Paris attack underscores the need for the West and the Kremlin to bury their differences and join forces to take on militants in Syria.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Andrew Roche)

Forgers in the Middle East are offering fake Syrian passports for as little as $250, days after it emerged that one of the Paris bombers may have entered Europe using false Syrian paperwork. The development raises fears over the potential security threat posed by tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in Greece every week, and will amplify calls to provide them with secure and legal routes to safety.

As the United Nations warned on Tuesday against scapegoating refugees for Friday’s attacks in Paris, a backlash nevertheless gained momentum with the news that up to eight people allegedly entered Europe using similar passport details as one of the Paris bombers. The EU border agency revealed that it does not have the equipment to assess the authenticity of people’s identification documents in all of the Greek islands.

A Guardian journalist in Iraqi Kurdistan was offered fake Syrian passports by two separate smuggling rings, less than a week after French authorities alleged that a terrorist used a similar forgery to enter the Greek island of Leros, before taking part in an attack on the Stade de France in Paris. For just $250, one smuggler based in Sulaymaniyah promises to deliver a fake Syrian passport, ID card or birth certificate within 10 days. A second forger in Duhok says he can procure a passport, allegedly with the help of a Syrian embassy official, within four days – for a premium price of $2,500.

The family of a Kurdish asylum seeker who died in a truck in Austria in August said Heresh Dindar, had been easily able to buy fake Syrian paperwork in Zakho, an Iraqi city close to the Turkish border. “Obtaining Syrian documents in Zakho is like drinking water,” said Dindar’s brother, Isa. “It is very easy.”

The revelations came as Serbian officials claimed that as many as eight asylum seekers entered Europe this year with similar passport details as ”Ahmad Almohammad”, the suspected pseudonym of one of the Paris suspects, leading to suspicions that all of them might have bought passports from the same forger in the Middle East. Two of them had identical documents, while the other six used similar names, a Serbian police source told the Guardian. But there is not yet any clear proof that any of them were definitely involved in the attack, an Interpol source said.

The revelations have increased scrutiny of the porous Greek maritime border, where over 670,000 asylum-seekers have crossed so far this year in an attempt to reach Europe. Using safety fears as an excuse, Poland’s new conservative government has already backed out of an EU-wide deal to share refugees among member states – while on Tuesday the rightwing Hungarian parliament voted to challenge the legitimacy of the refugee-sharing deal in the European courts.

A spokeswoman for Frontex, the EU border agency, admitted that her colleagues did not have the equipment or specialists necessary to check the authenticity of all ID documents among new arrivals on the Greek islands. A passport assessment team is in place on Lesbos, the main gateway for arrivals to Greece, but Frontex could not confirm whether other document experts are now operating on Leros, the island where the bomber is alleged to have entered Greece. Despite promising to beef up Frontex’s presence on the islands, EU countries have also provided the agency with less than half of the manpower it needs to properly operate. By 4 November, two of the EU’s most isolationist countries – Poland and Slovakia – had not sent a single border guard, while Hungary had sent just four.

“We have people to interview migrants and the purpose of this interview is to establish nationality,” said Ewa Moncure, a Frontex spokeswoman. “They may say no, this person’s accent is not from Syria – and if they have any doubt they will ask follow-up questions”, to test a migrant’s knowledge of life in Syria. But Moncure admitted that not all Greek islands were staffed with specialists who can examine the authenticity of passports. “You can’t say that wherever there is Frontex activity, there is a document expert.”

Formal asylum systems in EU countries have far more rigorous means of checking the backgrounds of asylum seekers. Migration officials in Sweden confirmed that they verify documents as a matter of course, while in Germany, “if there is any doubt, a language and text analysis will be performed”, said a spokeswoman for the Germany migration office.

But at the asylum seekers’ first point of entry to Europe in Greece the system is often not nearly as strict. When the Guardian visited Leros earlier in the year, several of the Syrian refugees on the island noted that some people registering as Syrian were in fact from Iraq, Lebanon or Palestine. Overworked officials who spoke no Arabic could have little idea who they were letting into Europe, they said. A Syrian teenager, who wished to be identified only by her first name, Reem, travelled with her father, mother and sister in a boat of 29 people to Leros from Turkey. Everyone on the boat claimed to be Syrian – according to Reem, only she and her family were.

“They said, ‘I don’t have a passport, I don’t have anything to say who I am, so I am Syrian’,” said Reem. “What can [officials] say? ‘He told me he is Syrian. He talks Arabic.’”

This week, such fears have done nothing to deter locals from bringing food, clothes and support to the hundreds still arriving every day on inflatable boats in increasingly hostile winter conditions. Spyros Daniil, who manages the Leros Solidarity Network with his wife Matina Kastivelli, said: “Today is Sunday but many women arrived this morning, set up a big table and served food to all the refugees. Nothing changes here.”

The UN hopes that the rest of Europe will respond in a similar way. On Tuesday, its refugee agency, the UNHCR, argued against scapegoating hundreds of thousands of refugees for crimes committed by just one of their number.

“The overwhelming majority of those coming to Europe are fleeing persecution or the life-threatening effects of conflict and are unable to reach safety in Europe by alternative avenues,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. “Precarious situations in countries of first asylum are also driving many to leave for Europe. Many are fleeing extremism and terrorism – from the very people associated with the Paris attacks.”

Fleming joined Human Rights Watch, an independent pressure group, in calling for the implementation of safe and legal means of mass resettlement for refugees still in the Middle East. Campaigners argue that organised resettlement will both save refugee lives, and give Europe greater control over their borders.

In an online statement, Peter Bouckaert, HRW’s emergency director, said: “The answer to the Paris attacks and the possibility that one of the attackers came by rubber dinghy to Greece, where he was registered on Leros island, is not to shut the door on those desperately fleeing war in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan – including many fleeing from IS.

“The answer is to put in place a coherent EU asylum policy that provides those fleeing war and repression with safe and legal alternatives to get that asylum, without having to risk their lives. Replacing the chaos with coherent policies would address both the responsibility to give asylum to those in need, and the security concerns raised by chaotic and uncontrolled flows.

“People fleeing war need refuge. And trying to build fences and stopping them at sea only drives them deeper into the hands of criminal gangs, and drives them underground where there is no control over who comes and goes.”

Two Indonesian newlyweds have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill a man the woman said had raped her a week before her marriage.

Rudi Effendi and his wife Nuriah also ate the victim's genitals after the man was killed, police said.

The couple were being held for further investigation after their arrests at their house in Tulang Bawang district in Sumatra's Lampung province on Sunday, a Lampung police spokeswoman said.

Police found the victim's body in a burnt minivan on October 4, the spokeswoman said, adding that a month-long investigation led to the conclusion that the couple had planned to kill the man, who was a driver for a travel agency.

The couple had married in September and the husband found out on the wedding night that his wife was no longer a virgin. She then said she had been raped one week before the marriage.

Police said Mr Effendi, 30, asked his 20-year-old wife to arrange a meeting with the man she accused of raping her. Mr Effendi stabbed the man to death and cut off his genitals before setting the car on fire.

Mr Effendi said he fried the severed genitals and ate them to cure his heartache over the rape.

Police said the couple could be charged with premeditated murder, which carries a maximum death penalty.

Catalonia's regional parliament has approved a plan to set up a road map for independence from Spain by 2017, in defiance of the central government.

The Barcelona-based chamber passed the motion by 72 votes to 63.

The proposal was tabled by pro-secession politicians from the Together For Yes alliance and the extreme left-wing Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). The groups together obtained a parliamentary majority in regional elections in September.

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy previously vowed to take legal action against the Catalan parliament if it was to approve the secession plan.

Mr Rajoy is scheduled to speak later on Monday.

The motion, passed by the parliament in its first post-election session, declared "the start of a process towards the creation of an independent Catalan state in the form of a republic" and a "process of democratic disconnection not subject to the decisions by the institutions of the Spanish state".

Separatist politicians stood up and applauded the victory that will likely put them on a collision course with the central government and Spain's highest court.

Raul Romeva, head of the Together For Yes alliance, said at the start of the session: "There is a growing cry for Catalonia to not merely be a country, but to be a state with everything that means. Today we don't only open a new parliament, this marks a before and after."

Catalan branches of Spain's ruling conservative Popular Party and the Socialist and the Citizens opposition parties had filed appeals to halt the vote, but Spain's constitutional court ruled last Thursday that it could go ahead.

Citizens regional leader Ines Arrimadas told separatist politicians: "You want to divide a country by raising a frontier within the European Union."