Daniel Borunda

A former Juarez police officer will be sent to prison after pleading guilty to a charge of torture in a case in which a man was forced to swallow bullet casings and was threatened with being sodomized with a baseball bat.

Magdalena Gonzalez Avellaneda was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said Wednesday. She must also pay 148,000 pesos (more than $11,300) in restitution and will be banned from public service for 15 years.

Gonzalez was one of three Juarez police officers arrested in connection with the torture of two men on March 6, 2012.

Prosecutors said that the police officers had stopped two men riding a motorcycle on Norzagaray boulevard near the Rio Grande in north Juarez.

According to the state attorney general's office, police blindfolded the men, covered their mouths with tape and took them to an old juvenile detention center nearby, where the men were beaten because police wanted to know where they sold drugs.

Prosecutors said that one of the men was forced to swallow three bullet casings and then had a gun placed in his hand and told to kill his friend, who had been beaten. When the victim refused, a police officer placed a baseball bat on the outside of his rectum and twisted the bat around.

The men were then beaten again and forced to drink alcohol before being taken to the Delicias police station and were booked on public disturbance charges, prosecutors said.

At the police station, the man who swallowed the bullet casings began having seizures and was taken to a hospital. An X-ray at the hospital found objects in the man's stomach. Doctors gave the man medicine that helped expel them.