Gay activists expressed disappointment that the suspect wasn’t immediately charged with a hate crime, saying authorities in Puerto Rico have never invoked a law covering crimes based on sexual orientation.

The dismembered body of 19-year-old college student Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was discovered Friday along a road in the interior town of Cayey. Lopez was widely known as a volunteer for organizations advocating HIV prevention and gay rights, and activists are planning remembrance vigils for him in cities including San Juan, New York and Chicago.

The suspect, 26-year-old Juan Martinez Matos, was arrested earlier this week and allegedly confessed to killing Lopez and mutilating his body. He was charged with first-degree murder and weapons violations and jailed on $4 million bond.

It could not be immediately determined if Martinez was represented by an attorney.

Martinez met Lopez while looking for women Thursday night in an area known for prostitution, according to prosecutor Jose Bermudez Santos. Bermudez said the suspect confessed to stabbing Lopez, who was dressed as a woman, after discovering he was a man.

“He has a deep-seated rage,” Bermudez said in remarks reported by the newspaper El Nuevo Dia.

“All the information we have is very clear that this is indeed a hate crime,” said Pedro Julio Serrano, a Puerto Rico native who is a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

A 2002 hate crime law in this U.S. territory has not been applied to any cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity despite calls to use it more aggressively, Serrano said. A suspect convicted of a hate crime offense as part of another crime automatically faces the maximum penalty for the underlying crime. For murder, that would be life in prison.

Serrano said he has identified at least 10 slayings on the island over the last seven years that should have been investigated as hate crimes, including some in which the victims were sex workers.

Two U.S. Congress members from New York, who are of Puerto Rican origin, have suggested prosecuting the case under new federal hate crimes legislation that extended coverage to sexual orientation. President Barack Obama signed it last month.

The FBI is monitoring the investigation, and Lymarie Llovet Ayala, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Juan, said Wednesday that federal prosecutors are considering whether to take on the case.

Puerto Rico has some history of violence against gays. In the 1980s, the island was terrorized by serial killer Angel Colon Maldonado, known as “The Angel of the Bachelors,” who was linked to the murders of 27 homosexual people and is serving life in prison.

But the island also is known as a welcoming place for gays, particularly in comparison with more socially conservative Caribbean islands where homosexuals often live in hiding.

“The people of Puerto Rico are very inclusive and accepting of differences,” said Serrano. “I think these kinds of crimes show the ugly side of homophobia, but it’s a minority of people that are willing to be so violent in expressing their prejudice,”

Serrano said a protest against homophobia was planned for Thursday outside Puerto Rico’s Capitol.

Says the Baltimore Sun:

Jason’s killing left his teachers, classmates and relatives in tears and family members asking questions of one another even in the days leading up to today’s funeral.

Did Jason leave his mother’s house and move in with his aunt, as his grandmother suggested? Or was he just visiting on that fateful day, as a cousin said? And why did people in his aunt’s house open their door to the suspect, a convicted killer released early from prison because of flaws in his case?

His paternal grandmother, Wanda Williams, one of the first Jason confided in about being gay and who handed him a few dollars now and then for food and clothes, questioned how other relatives could have allowed the boy to be in the same house with Parrish, given his violent past.

“I haven’t cried so much this entire life,” Williams said. “My grandson hollering for help and there is nobody there to help him.”

Jason was one of the most popular kids at school, his English teacher said, always first to class, always first to the cafeteria, where students fought to sit at his table, always first to turn in his homework and always getting near-perfect grades.

“He was outspoken and excited about everything he talked about,” Jones said. “Walking into school, he was the first one to share what he did over the weekend. He was very, very popular, and he was everyone’s best friend.”

Jason wanted to be a pediatrician, Jones said, and the only thing the two debated was Jason’s constant chatter.

“He was not a behavioral problem,” Jones said. “He was a talking problem.”

A Baltimore police spokesman would say only that Jason “was staying at his aunt’s house.” It was there that Jason met Parrish, with whom the spokesman said the teen had a “forced sexual relationship.”

The Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevodia reports that the suspect in the killing of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado is Juan antonio Martinez Matos, 26 years old and father of four. (This is a translation from a colleague; the link is www.elnuevodia.com/confiesaasesinatodejovenhomosexual-638687.html and we’d appreciate corrections!)

Martinez Matos was “looking for women” in a red light district last Friday. He had already been turned down several times, but Lopez Mercado, wearing a blue dress and boots, agreed to get in his car.

District Attorney Jose J. Bermudez says that in his confession, Martinez Matos said that he thought Lopez Mercado was a woman. The victim asked him for money and when he refused, Lopez Mercado pulled out a knife.  When Martinez Matos realized that the teenager was actually male, he had a flashback to when he was raped in prison while he was serving a sentence for domestic violence. He then attacked Lopez Mercado, separating his arms from his torso.

Police found a wig, a knife, a burned mattress, a burned PVC pipe and blood on the wall where the murder took place.

The forensic evidence is being investigated by the FBI. Though they have not specified charges yet, the DA says that he is sure this qualifies as a hate crime.

Activists are calling for justice and for the media to focus on the suspect’s acts instead of the behavior of the victim.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a statement saying: 

“We urge local law enforcement authorities to continue their expedient work on this case. Fortunately, Puerto Rico has a local hate crimes statute, but it is imperative that federal authorities continue to monitor this ongoing investigation and step in if necessary or assist if asked, as allowed by the new federal hate crimes law.”

Pedro Julio Serrano, Task Force Communications Manager and founder of Puerto Rico Para Todas said in a statement:

“This is a terrible, terrible crime. While we are pleased that law enforcement has acted promptly in making an arrest, it is vital that the hate crimes angle be investigated. This horrendous killing of a young gay man shows no compassion or respect for the dignity of a human life. As someone who grew up in Puerto Rico and has been very active in its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, this is a heart-wrenching moment. Our hearts and sympathies go out to all of Jorge Steven López’s loved ones at this difficult time. Justice must prevail.”

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365gay has new information on the murder investigation surrounding the decapitation and dismemberment of Puerto Rican teen Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado.

Juan Costa Rivera, a 365gay reader who knows Lopez Mercado’s friends, says that the local PR press is reporting that the suspect’s house was radied by police, where they found a burned mattress and pvc pope, a wig, two knives and a “big blood stain on a wall.”  The suspect confessed to police, saying he was looking for prostitutes in a red light district in Caguas. Basically, Rivera says:

“After being rejected by a few women, he saw Jorge dressed as a woman and asked him to go with him to the house. Apparently on the house, the suspect found out that Lopez was a man, after Lopez made sexual advantages, and as a result of the rage, he did what he did.”

Rivera says the police told media outlets that the suspect will likely use a “homosexual panic” defense, arguing for a plea of temporary insanity.

The main suspect of the cruel murder of a young homosexual found in the area of Guavate Cayey, was arrested this morning and shall be taken to a judge today to face charges, confirmed the press of the Puerto Rico Police, Damaris Periera.

She also indicted that two vehicles were taken into custody, and that there is a crime scene as well under police custody in the town of Cayey.

Pagan says that the FBI is now also involved and back2Stonewall says that the FBI is investigating the murder as a hate crime. Other reports from around the web say the suspect may have offered the victim money for sex.

Says the Associated Press in the first mainstream media coverage we’ve seen:

Police say they have arrested a suspect in the slaying of a teenager whose decapitated remains were found along a road in southern Puerto Rico.

Police commandant Eliezer Colon says the man was detained at his home early Tuesday morning. The suspect has not been identified because he has not been formally charged.

The burned and dismembered body of 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez was discovered Friday in a wooded area of the town of Cayey. Authorities are looking into whether he may have been targeted because he was gay.

Activist Pedro Julio Serrano called on authorities to treat the case as a hate crime if the investigation shows Lopez was killed because of his sexual orientation.

There will be a vigil at 8 p.m. Sunday in New York City. Americablog is calling on people to email Attorney General Eric Holder to ensure the murder is prosecuted as a hate crime.

The findings came in a report by an 18-member panel of independent experts who urged the Kremlin to implement a number of legal reforms. They include narrowing the broad definitions of terrorism and extremism under Russian law, decriminalizing defamation cases against journalists and granting appeal rights to people forced into psychiatric hospitals by the courts.

The expert panel said it also was concerned about violence against lesbian, gay and bisexual persons, including reports of police harassment. It said it received reports of people being assaulted or even killed because they were gay or lesbian. The panel said it was concerned at the “systematic discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation” in Russia.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in the 1990s, but many Russians are vehemently opposed to expansion of gay rights or gay-rights demonstrations. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is an outspoken foe of gay rights and always has blocked attempts to hold gay pride marches in the capital, calling one a satanic gathering.

The U.N. panel – which this week assessed the compliance of Russia and four other countries with the U.N.’s 1966 international treaty on civil and political rights – receives its information from various U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and cases at the European Court of Human Rights.

Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray told justices during oral arguments that Frank Spisak had a fair trial and deserves death. Cordray urged the high court to reverse a federal appeals court ruling that found Spisak had an ineffective trial lawyer and found that his jury received faulty sentencing instructions.

Spisak, 58, was convicted of three murders at Cleveland State University over a seven-month period in 1982 – crimes he said were motivated by his hatred of gays, blacks and Jews. At the same time, Spisak claimed his crimes were sparked by mental illness related to confusion about his sexual and gender  identity. He wants to have surgery to become a woman.

The 1983 trial became a public spectacle as Spisak celebrated his killings in court and openly discussed his hateful views. He even grew a Hitler-style mustache, carried a copy of Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf” during the proceedings and gave the Nazi salute to the jury.

The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that Spisak’s trial attorney essentially gave up on his client in closing arguments by conceding that Spisak was “demented” and “undeserving of sympathy.”

Cordray acknowledged the defense lawyer’s argument was far from perfect, but said the attorney – now deceased – did the best he could with an unsavory client. He said the defense lawyer instead appealed to the jury’s sense of humanity to spare from death a defendant who was obviously very troubled.

“I don’t see easily how he could have done better,” Cordray said.

Michael Benza, representing Spisak on appeal, said the former defense lawyer essentially abandoned his client.

“It is the role of a defense counsel to advocate,” Benza said.

But most of the justices were skeptical of Benza’s arguments.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the Supreme Court had never found a defense lawyer to be ineffective solely on the basis of a closing argument if his conduct during the rest of trial was acceptable.

“You’re asking us to take a new tack,” she told Benza.

Chief Justice John Roberts said Spisak’s lawyer seemed to be trying to make the best out of a difficult situation by admitting to the jury that his client’s behavior was awful.

“It seems to me this disagreement is over different styles of strategy,” Roberts said.

Benza also argued that the instructions to jurors were flawed because they were not told that one juror’s vote against the death penalty would prevent a death sentence. Ohio law now includes such an instruction, although none was required at the time of Spisak’s trial.

It’s the second time the case has come before the high court. The justices reinstated Spisak’s death sentence two years ago in a 6-3 decision that scolded federal appeals courts for second-guessing trial judges in murder cases.

However, the appeals court reached the same conclusion it did the first time and threw out Spisak’s death sentence.

Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to act urgently to stop the abuses, warning that so-called social cleansing poses a new threat to security even as other violence recedes.

The bodies of several gay men were found in Baghdad’s main Shiite district of Sadr City earlier this year with the Arabic words for “pervert” and “puppy” – considered derogatory terms for homosexuals in Iraq – written on their chests.

The New York-based advocacy group said the threats and abuses have since spread to the cities of Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although the practice remains concentrated in the capital.

“Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street,” the 67-page report said.

Reliable numbers weren’t available, Human Rights Watch said, blaming a combination of the failure of authorities to investigate such crimes and the stigma preventing families from reporting the deaths. But it cited a well-informed U.N. official as saying in April that the death toll was probably “in the hundreds.”

The campaign has been largely blamed on Shiite extremists who have long targeted behavior deemed un-Islamic, beating and even killing women for not wearing veils and bombing liquor stores.

Shiite militiamen have for the most part stopped their violence against rival Sunnis after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces were routed by U.S. and Iraqi forces last year and declared a cease-fire. But the report indicated they were conducting a less publicized campaign of social cleansing.

“The same thing that used to happen to Sunnis and Shiites is now happening to gays,” said a doctor who had fled Baghdad and was interviewed for the report. The doctor, who described himself as gay, said several of his friends had been killed.

An Iraqi Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue with the media, acknowledged there has been a sharp escalation in attacks against gay men this year by suspected Shiite extremists. But he told The Associated Press that the ministry does not have numbers “because in most cases the family members themselves are either involved in the killing or prefer to keep silent, fearing shame.”

The former No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Patricia Butenis, wrote in a letter to a U.S. congressman that reports from contacts familiar with the areas where some of the bodies were found “suggest the killings are the work of militias who believe homosexuality is a form of Western deviance that cannot be tolerated.”

The letter was in response to concerns raised by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who is openly gay. Polis had brought up the issue during a visit to Iraq.

Homosexuals have been targeted throughout the Iraq war, but the killings appear to have intensified as improvements in overall security led gay men to begin going out to cafes in groups and socializing in public, according to the report.

Human Rights Watch accused authorities of doing nothing to stop the killings and warned that reflected an overall inability to protect the people.

“These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq’s post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens,” said Rasha Moumneh, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch report was based on interviews with more than 50 Iraqi men who identified themselves as gay as well as Iraqi human rights activists, journalists and doctors.

The Iraqi government’s Human Rights Ministry has condemned the killings of gay men.

“We are against any violation of their rights because they are after all Iraqi citizens,” said ministry spokesman, Kalim Amin. “The government should not allow any armed group to launch random killings against people, sometimes only for mere suspicion.”

Sadr City, a teeming slum district, is a stronghold of al-Sadr’s militia, which launched several uprisings against American forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 before U.S.-Iraqi forces seized control last year.

Iraqi police said homosexuals were afraid of being seen in public while the militiamen were in charge of Sadr City but began going out more as violence declined.

Fliers warning homosexuals that they will be killed “unless they come back to their senses” were distributed in Sadr City earlier this year and Shiite clerics have frequently called for the “education and rehabilitation” of gays in their Friday sermons.

Sadrist Sheik Ammar al-Saadi has denied any involvement by the movement in the killings and said the clerics only urged people to stop practicing homosexuality.

One 35-year-old man with the pseudonym Hamid has been unable to speak properly since his partner of 10 years was seized from his parents’ home in early April by four gunmen wearing black. His body was found the next day.

“They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out,” Hamid was quoted as saying.

Human Rights Watch singled out the use of glue to seal men’s rectums as a common form of torture.

The report said Iraqi law does not ban consensual homosexual conduct between adults but contains certain provisions that can be exploited, including Saddam Hussein-era provisions that could reduce penalties for so-called honor crimes and crimes against people due to their sexual orientation.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - DECEMBER 30: An Iraqi seller shows a rug bearing a picture of former Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein at his shop on December 30, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq. Suppoprters of the former dictator are expected to gather at his burial site in Tikrit for the first anniversary of his execution, prompting security forces to be placed on alert. (Photo by Wathiq Khuzaie /Getty Images)

On Sunday, July 12th Radio 5 Live  will be airing a documentary about life as a gay Iraqi after Saddam Hussein. It’s likely to be powerful and disturbing and an article from the BBC gives a preview.

The most shocking finding human rights groups are faced with is that homophobia and gay related murders are on the rise since Saddam’s regime was toppled. The causes are unclear, but the fact is that the repressive regime we have all learned to condemn created a kind of pocket for gay culture in Iraq. Post war, the grip of religious leaders has strengthened and studies estimate that gay related murders since 2003 may be in the hundreds.

This year there are going to be lots of proclamations about successes in Iraq. As troops scale back, government and military personnel are going to be eager to discuss the progress for human rights and economic rights in the country.

The important thing to remember is that progress doesn’t happen in one wave. The Radio 5 documentary serves to remind us that as things take a step forward, human rights often takes a backseat.

Lawyers Paul Walker and Joseph DAndrea told Judge Peter Paul Olszewski, Jr. that they had been appointed to represent Cuadra only for the original trial, not for appeals.

They argued that they do not believe Cuadra has the money to pay them and asked the court to appoint new attorneys to handle the appeal. Olszewski agreed to sever the lawyers from the appeal.

Last month, the two filed an appeal of the conviction and sentence. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania has not indicated when the appeal might be heard.

Cuadra was convicted on March 16 of killing Kocis. He was sentenced to life in prison after a jury could not agree on the death penalty

Cuadra’s former lover and business partner, 35-year-old Joseph Kerekes, already is serving life after pleading guilty last December to second degree murder after making a deal with prosecutors.

Kocis’ body was discovered in his home in 2006 by firefighters responding to a blaze in the rural home. More than 80 percent of the body was covered by third-degree burns and police said the fire had been set deliberately to destroy evidence.

The 27-year-old Cuadra had faced the death sentence, but the jury of eight men and four women could not reach a unanimous decision on whether the prosecution had met the burden of proof that the death penalty was appropriate.

Moqtada Sadr made the call on Thursday during a seminar of clerics, police and tribal leaders.

There has been growing anti-gay violence in Iraq. Last month another Shiite cleric, Sattar al-Battat, repeatedly condemned homosexuality during Friday prayers, saying Islam prohibits homosexuality. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

The following week, the bodies of two gay men were found in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City. Several days later, a third man was found dead on the outskirts of Sadr City. By the end of the month, another three bodies were found and police said four other men were found tortured but alive.

Amnesty International said that in addition to the violence in Sadr City, 25 suspected gays had been killed in recent months in Baghdad.

A group calling itself “Brigades of the Righteous” has posted signs around Sadr City listing the names of alleged homosexuals and threatening to kill them.

Moqtada Sadr’s spokesperson on Friday said that the cleric’s call for the eradication of homosexuality was not an endorsement of the violence.

“Al-Sadr rejects this type of violence,” said Sheikh Wadea al-Atabi. “And anyone who commits violence [against gays] will not be considered as being one of us,” al-Atabi said.

“The only remedy to stop [homosexuality] is through preaching and guidance. There is no other way to put an end to it,” he said.

In addition to Al-Sadr’s remarks Thursday, another Shiite leader at the meeting said that homosexuality “is a disaster that has come to the community,” and a tribal leader from Sadr City, said: “Everybody has to work to preserve the morals of young people from the corrupt phenomena of the West.”