Mexico City – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador admitted yesterday that a group of soldiers could be responsible for executing five civilians in Tamaulipas (northeast), an event that occurred three weeks ago and was recorded on video surveillance cameras.
A video broadcast on Tuesday by the Spanish newspaper El País and the US network Univisión recorded in the border city Nuevo Laredo, in the north of the country, shows several soldiers removing five civilians from a vehicle and placing them next to a wall.
Later, the uniformed men opened fire in other directions, apparently repelling an attack, but one of them who was next to the detainees fired at them. Later, he is seen disturbing the crime scene.
“Apparently there was an execution and that cannot be allowed,” said the leftist president, during whose government the military have accumulated power by expanding their functions to different areas. The uniformed officers involved are already “under protection,” López Obrador added at his daily press conference.
“There is no cover-up because we do not tolerate the violation of human rights,” he said, recalling that the Ministry of Defense has already started an investigation “for the alleged crime of extrajudicial execution.”
The incident occurred on May 18 in the city of Nuevo Laredo, bordering the United States, according to the Spanish newspaper El País and the US network Univisión, which revealed the recording of a security camera.
On Tuesday night it was reported that the Attorney General’s Office had already started an investigation in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, the highest command of the Army.
The military prosecutor’s office also opened its own and has ensured that “impunity in the performance of personnel or any conduct contrary to the rule of law will not be tolerated.”
In previous episodes involving the military with alleged human rights violations, López Obrador has emphasized that these are isolated cases and that unlike past governments, his does not massacre civilians or make them disappear.
The incident occurred in the same city where last February the military shot at a vehicle in which seven young people were traveling, apparently leaving a party, killing five of them. Four soldiers are being prosecuted for that case.
Human rights organizations have denounced in the past other extrajudicial executions and the excessive use of force by the military. In addition, several of them have been arrested.
two for their alleged involvement in the notorious disappearance of 4
3 students in the south of the country in 2014.
Source: Ambito
