Man seeks brother’s release

PALMER — As Erick Cordero sits at a table in the Palmer Deli, his mind is 3,000 miles away.

An American Citizen and former Mat-Su Borough School District School Board member who considers himself an Alaskan, Cordero was born in Mexico. He has family there — his mother, sister, father and brother are there. It’s his brother he’s thinking about.

“It’s a miracle he’s alive,” Cordero says.

That’s because his brother is in prison where witnesses say he was tortured, beaten, starved and forced to sign a confession. He’s a political prisoner, Cordero says, and he wants to see his brother released.

“It seems surreal but it actually happens,” he said.

Cordero’s father spent his career in the military. Cordero said he and his sister were the first two people in their family to get college degrees. His parents sacrificed a lot to make that happen.

His brother, Victor Hugo Cordero, took a different path. He got certified to become a pilot. After a friend died in a plane crash he stopped flying. He worked a series of jobs after that before landing in law enforcement.

“I think law enforcement is his calling,” Cordero said.

His brother worked first as a patrolman in Guadalajara. Later, he started his own company in Mexico City doing security work. Clients weren’t paying so he went out of business.

In 2008, he was offered a job as a police chief in the Mexican state of Durango. Victor was wary. He knew Durango was a very violent, very dangerous place. When he finally decided to take the job, he chose to move there alone, without his wife and son.

“He just moved by himself and my parents took care of their grandson,” Cordero said.

Four years later, in 2012, the job got to be too much for the police chief. Cordero said his brother submitted his resignation but the mayor he served didn’t accept it. She said it was too hard to find a police chief to serve Durango.

He wouldn’t be in the job much longer.

In 2013, an attorney general came to the police station with the army backing her up. She confiscated all of the department’s guns.

“We’re going to meet you on x day and give you back the guns,” Cordero said his brother and the rest of the department were told.

That day came and the guns weren’t returned.

“Instead, they arrested everybody,” Cordero said.

And he means everybody — officers, administrative assistants, the entire department. Most of those people were released in a relatively short amount of time. Cordero’s brother, a chief from a neighboring department and a few others were retained.

Some of the prisoners released told Cordero’s family that his brother was subjected to electric shocks, beatings, and needles pushed under his fingernails. They said he was starved.

Cordero’s brother signed a confession to being in collusion with drug cartels, to kidnapping and spying for them. Cordero says the confession was forced. An official human rights report found his brother’s rights were violated. A judge signed a writ of protection that should have secured his brother’s release pending trial but the writ was ignored.

Police chiefs each year in Mexico have to pass what’s called a “trust test.” Cordero has no idea what the test entails. Officers aren’t allowed to talk about it. But the idea is that it will root out chiefs with ties to cartels. His brother passed it every year, most recently just before his arrest.

Cordero said he believes what’s actually happening is that the cartels decided to dismantle the police department to get their own people in charge. He said it has happened before in Mexico.

After Victor was taken into custody, his wife and her mother fled the area.

“She then received threats that if she got a lawyer or tried to help him she would be killed,” Cordero said.

Since then, Cordero said, he and his family have been fighting for his brother’s release. His sister has plowed every resource she has into the fight. She lives in Texas but has spent the past two years in Mexico City, caring for their elderly parents but also fighting for the return of their brother.

“I think my sister has made enough noise to keep him alive,” Cordero said.

He said they managed to get his brother moved to a different prison.

“They finally stopped hurting him and started feeding him like a human being,” Cordero said.

His family hasn’t been able to visit at all over these two years. Their contact with his brother is limited to a five-minute phone call twice a week. And that’s only when the phones are working.

For his part, Cordero said he worked behind the scenes as much as he could. He contributed financially when he was able.

The kidnapping came just as he started a new job -- he'd resigned his seat on the school board to work as an aid for state Rep. Lynn Gattis in Juneau. He said he threw himself into work as a coping mechanism but eventually the wheels came off.

When the stress became unbearable he resigned from the legislature.

Later, he got a job managing the campaign against the ballot measure that legalized marijuana in Alaska.

Cordero and his family had tried to be somewhat quiet publicly about the kidnapping. They were worried about their own safety but they were also worried about their brother. Cordero talked to people he knew. His boss, Lynn Gattis, and others sent letters seeking his brother’s release.

Senator Lisa Murkowski also took up the case. When she visited Juneau during his time there, “she actually came to me, looking for me,” he said.

But now, with time on his hands as he looks for a new job after the end of the Proposition 2 campaign and with a clearer understanding of the security implications, Cordero said he’s taking his campaign public.

He started a petition on thepetitionsite.com — you can find a link on his Facebook page at facebook.com/ECorderoAK — and is renewing his attempts to get the U.S. Government or non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International to take up the cause.

“While I’m looking for a job and I have all this time I’m going to try and do something,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.