Mexican police officers arrested for border killings

Mexican prosecutors announced that 12 state police officers were indicted for allegedly killing 19 people, including at least two Guatemalan migrants, after the victims' bodies were found shot and burned last month.

Tamaulipas state Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said on Tuesday all of the officers were in custody and now face charges of homicide, abuse of authority and making false statements.

Still unknown, however, were the motives the officers might have had in the slayings. However, local and state police in Mexico are often in the pay of drug cartels.

Many criminal groups in the country earn money by charging human smugglers for passage across territory under the gangs' control. Others will kidnap or kill migrants whose smugglers have not paid them or who have instead paid a rival gang.

The 19 bodies were discovered piled in the burnt and bullet-riddled wreckage of a pickup truck near the town of Camargo, directly across the US border from Texas.

Preliminary investigations suggested the victims had been shot before their bodies were set alight.

Bullet shells removed

Though the pickup truck holding the bodies had at least 113 bullet impacts, few shell casings were found at the scene.

Barrios Mojica said the police officers charged in the killings knew the shells might reveal they were the shooters, so they probably picked them up. 

"There is growing force behind the hypothesis that the crime scene was altered, due to the absence of casings," he said.

The prosecutor also said the truck carrying the victims was apparently part of a larger caravan of vehicles from Guatemala and El Salvador.

Such convoys usually have an armed escort to provide protection as migrants are smuggled across the US border.

Mexican authorities have said only four of the bodies have been identified so far ­— two Guatemalans and two Mexicans. 

History of violence

The January massacre is the latest chapter of the Tamaulipas region's history of police corruption.

Most towns and cities in the northern Mexican state saw their municipal police forces dissolved years ago after many officers were found to be taking bribes from the country's powerful drug traffickers.

The federal government has since established a more professional state police force, hoping it would help solve the rampant corruption problem.

Cartel-related violence has long beset the nation of nearly 130 million.

Since the so-called drug war first broke out in 2006, more than 300,000 have been killed and more than 82,000 are believed to have disappeared. Mexico recorded 34,523 assassinations in 2020 alone.

mb/dj (AP, dpa, AFP)