Guards Implicated in Mexico Prison’s Deadly Gang Attack
Guards Implicated in Mexico Prison’s Deadly Gang Attack
nytimes.com
By ELISABETH MALKIN
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On Tuesday, a woman attended the wake of Francisco Guevara, an inmate killed during the massacre at Apodaca prison.
MEXICO CITY — Just after 1 a.m., the guards opened the doors, and 30 men climbed up to guard tower No. 6 of the state prison outside the northern city of Monterrey. One by one, they slipped down ropes to waiting vehicles.
Just after the men made their escape into the surrounding mountains, more guards opened more doors. This time, they let inmates belonging to the Zetas criminal gang surge from Cellblock C into Cellblock D, where their rivals in the Gulf Cartel were sleeping.
Over the next hour, Nuevo León State officials say, 44 prisoners — all believed to be part of the Gulf Cartel — were bludgeoned, beaten and stabbed to death.
Only two hours after the events began Sunday did jail officials at the Apodaca Prison alert state officials and the army.
“By the time we had the call for help, it was already past 3 in the morning, two hours after the escape and the fight,” said Jorge Domene, the state security spokesman, describing Sunday morning’s events. “By the time help arrived in response to the call, almost all the deaths had taken place,” he said, indicating that prison security cameras showed that more than 200 inmates had participated in the killings.
Officials in Nuevo León State said the jailbreak and the massacre had been carried out by the Zetas, the violent gang of drug enforcers who have turned against their former bosses in the Gulf Cartel and spread their reach over large parts of northern Mexico and the Gulf Coast.
The Zetas appeared to have the authorities at the Apodaca prison under their control. Investigators continued to question security guards Tuesday, and Mr. Domene told a radio interviewer that as many as 16 guards and officials had been implicated, including the prison’s warden, Gerónimo Miguel Andrés Martínez, and its chief of security, Óscar Deveze Laureano.
At least nine guards confessed to aiding the escape and the massacre directly and admitted that they had received $780 to $1,560 a month from the Zetas.
Officials said Tuesday that two men and a woman were stabbed to death Monday as they were waiting to be admitted to the Topo Chico jail, which is also in the state of Nuevo León.
The violence and corruption in Mexico’s overcrowded prison system have burst into public view with regularity since President Felipe Calderón started his crackdown on drug gangs more than five years ago.
In May 2009, 53 prisoners, many of them Zetas, walked out of a jail in the state of Zacatecas as guards looked on. In December 2010, 151 prisoners escaped from the jail in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Texas. In July that year, the director of a prison in the northern city of Gómez Palacio was accused of allowing gangs out of the prison to commit murder-for-hire jobs using prison guards’ weapons and vehicles.
Of the 30 men who escaped early Sunday, 25 were convicted of federal crimes, said the Nuevo León governor, Rodrigo Medina. Among the escapees was Óscar Manuel Bernal Soriana, known as the Spider. Officials said he was a local Zeta leader with a reputation for bloodthirstiness who may have planned the jailbreak and ensuing massacre.
In his first comments on the Apodaca incident, Mr. Calderón said Tuesday that the prison systems in some states were “in crisis” and that the federal government was building new prisons, “an effort that has not been made in 20 years in Mexico.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/wo...r=1&ref=mexico
Guards Confess Helping Inmates Escape from Mexican Prison
Guards Confess Helping Inmates Escape from Mexican Prison
usopenborders.com
Nuevo Leon state Security Council spokesman, Jorge Domene, said that nine of the 18 guards arrested in connection with the escape and massacre were questioned by prosecutors and confirmed they helped the criminals
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MONTERREY, Mexico – Nine guards have confessed that they helped 30 inmates escape and allowed gunmen from the Los Zetas drug cartel to enter another section of the prison in the northern Mexican city of Apodaca, where they killed 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel, officials said.
“There was a deal with some of the guards. First, there was the escape between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., and minutes later the fight, which lasted about one and a half hours, took place,” Nuevo Leon state Security Council spokesman Jorge Domene said.
Nine of the 18 guards arrested in connection with the escape and massacre were questioned by prosecutors and confirmed that they helped the criminals, Domene said.
The fight started early Sunday in the prison in Apodaca, a suburb of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon’s capital.
Federal and state security forces regained control of the prison Sunday morning and the Nuevo Leon state government set up an area to assist inmates’ relatives, who gathered around the prison seeking information about loved ones.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, called on the Mexican government Tuesday to investigate the deaths at the prison.
“We urge Mexican authorities to conduct an exhaustive and independent investigation of the deaths and the prisoners’ escape,” OHCHR spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.
The prison’s warden, Jeronimo Miguel Andres Martinez; deputy warden, Juan Hernandez; and security chief, Oscar Devece Laureano, were removed from their posts and have been placed under investigation, Nuevo Leon state Gov. Rodrigo Medina confirmed Monday.
The director of Nuevo Leon’s prison system, Ernesto Garcia Guerrero, and 18 guards on duty at the time of the melee also have been fired and are being investigated.
“The loss of human life” in Sunday morning’s fight was regrettable and that support was being provided to the slain inmates’ families, Medina said.
The prison was plagued by overcrowding and most of the escaped prisoners, 25, were behind bars for “federal offenses,” including organized crime and drug trafficking, while the remaining five were being held for violations of state law, the governor said.
The fugitives are members of the Los Zetas drug cartel – including its leader in the northern city of Monterrey, arrested last year – while most of the people killed in the fight belonged to that gang’s main rival, the Gulf cartel, the governor said.
The Zetas, a band of special forces deserters turned outlaws, spent years as the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel before going into business for themselves.
A turf war between those two drug cartels and clashes pitting criminals against the security forces claimed some 2,000 lives in Nuevo Leon last year.
Sunday’s fight produced the largest death toll from an incident of this type in the past few years in Mexico.
A fight last month at a prison in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas left 31 inmates dead.
A fire apparently caused by a short-circuit at the prison in Apodaca left 14 inmates dead and 35 others injured on May 20. EFE
Guards Confess Helping Inmates Escape from Mexican Prison*|*U.S. Open Borders
Anyone else see a Problem with This??
And THESE are the ppl being supported by American taxpayer money, THESE are the ppl getting "amnesty" and other insane Loopholes..
THESE gaining FREE Housing, Food, Education and Healthcare, on OUR dime!!
And to think SOME Americans are okay with this!!!
I really will NEVER see or be okay with Allowing our country to be RUINED and STRAINED, Allowing Americans to SUFFER and STRUGGLE!
Apparently if you can woo a Tv crowd by singing and being a good "reality tv star"/actor, You can qualify to lead a country!!
