Mexican police allegedly used near death-squad tactics

Lev Garcia, Associated Press
Updated 12:29 pm, Wednesday, February 28, 2018

ERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) — Police in Mexico's corruption-plagued state of Veracruz set up units that used dirty-war, death-squad style tactics to abduct, kill and dispose of at least 15 people, mostly youths, who they suspected of being drug cartel informers and drug runners, according to charges filed by state prosecutors.

The allegations filed last week against the former top police commanders in Veracruz show all the signs of the human rights abuses of Mexico's notorious anti-guerrilla counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1960s and 70s.

Police in marked patrol cars picked up youths but never recorded their arrests. Instead they turned them over to specialized interrogation/torture squads working at the police academy itself, according to the indictment, and they were later killed and their bodies disposed of.

. . .

It is reminiscent of the 1970s military counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin America, when detentions led to clandestine torture cells on military bases, and then unmarked graves.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Mexican-police-allegedly-used-near-death-squad-12716802.php