CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico — A lots state cops officers have actually been detained for presumably eliminating 19 individuals, consisting of Guatemalan migrants, whose bodies were discovered shot and burned near the U.S. border late in January, Mexican authorities revealed Tuesday.
Tamaulipas state Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica stated all 12 officers remained in custody and face charges of murder, abuse of authority and making incorrect declarations.
The killings restored memories of the gruesome 2010 massacre of 72 migrants near the town of San Fernando in the very same gang-ridden state. But those killings were done by a drug cartel, while it is likely many individuals will discover it more stunning that the Jan. 22 slayings presumably were performed by police.
“In the aforementioned acts of Jan. 22, at least 12 state police officers participated,” Barrios Mojica stated.
The chief law officer did not state what intention the officers may have had, though corrupt regional and state cops in Mexico are frequently in the pay of drug cartels.
Cartels in Mexico frequently charge migrant smugglers for crossing their area, and abduct or eliminate migrants whose smugglers have actually not paid or paid a competing gang.
The bodies were discovered stacked in a charred pickup in Camargo, throughout the Rio Grande from Texas, in a location that has actually been bloodied for many years by turf fights in between the residues of the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel.
Authorities have actually stated 4 of the dead have actually been determined up until now — 2 Guatemalans and 2 Mexicans. Their names have actually not been launched by authorities, however family members of among the dead Mexicans stated he worked as an immigrant trafficker.
Of the 19 bodies taken a look at by specialists, 16 were discovered to be males, one was validated as female and the 2 others were so terribly burned their gender had actually not yet been identified.
The forensic outcomes validated the worries of households in a rural Indigenous farming neighborhood in Guatemala who have actually stated they lost contact with 13 migrants as they took a trip towards the United States.
The truck holding the bodies had 113 bullet effects, however authorities were puzzled by the truth that nearly no invested shell housings were discovered at the scene.
Initially, that led detectives to hypothesize the shootings might have happened somewhere else, and the truck driven to the area where it was set on fire.
But Barrios Mojica stated the state cops officers charged in the killings understood their shell casing may provide away, so most likely chose them up.
“There is growing force behind the hypothesis that the crime scene was altered, due to the absence of casings,” he stated.
In explaining the hours that led up to the killings, Barrios Mojica stated the truck bring the victims was obviously part of a bigger convoy of automobiles carrying migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador to smuggle them throughout the U.S. border. He stated the trucks likewise brought armed guys to offer defense.
Barrios Mojica did not eliminate that the factor for the killings might have been a conflict in between drug gangs, which contest area and the right to charge migrant smugglers for going through “their” area.
The massacre is the most recent chapter in Tamaulipas’ history of cops corruption. Most towns and cities in the state saw their community police liquified years earlier, since officers were frequently in the pay of the cartels. A more expert state cops force was expected to be the response, a belief that came crashing down with the arrests revealed Tuesday.
A repeat of the 2010 massacre has actually long been among the Mexican federal government’s worst headaches.
In August 2010, Zetas cartel members stopped 2 tractor-trailers bring lots of mainly Central American migrants and took them to a cattle ranch in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando. After the migrants declined to work for the cartel, they were blindfolded, bound on the flooring and shot dead.
In 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated, “We do not want a repeat of horrendous, regrettable acts like San Fernando.”
Relatives of migrants from Guatemala’s province of San Marcos are so persuaded that 13 of the 19 charred remains were their enjoyed ones that a few of the households currently set up standard altars to the dead, with flowers and photos.
Some of the family members in Guatemala informed of getting calls from the migrant smuggler who took the group of 10 males and 3 female north, informing them their member of the family were dead. Relatives stated they lost contact with them around around Jan. 21.
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