A Mexican cartel teamed up with local police in a border town close to Texas and killed hundreds of people, a report revealed Sunday.
Los Zetas cartel members embarked on a killing spree in Allende, Mexico back in 2011. The killing spree was prompted by the cartel suspecting that some of its own operatives had pocketed $10 million in profits and this thievery could not go unpunished.
Forty-two people were reported missing, but a Zetas operative previously admitted in a U.S. court in 2013 that 300 people were killed. It is unclear if the 300 died in one massacre or in multiple massacres.
Bodies were burned so that they were unrecognizable to authorities. The killings began between March 18 and March 20, 2011 as 60 Zetas hitmen tracked down anyone within the area with the last name Garza, the family that Los Zetas suspected of having robbed them of millions.
“In 2010 and 2011, Los Zetas had at their service 36 policemen in San Fernando and 20 in Allende. Nevertheless, the agents interacted in different ways with the criminals.” the report, which has the Mexican government’s backing states. “Some [policemen] became enthusiastic accomplices [of the cartels]; others put distance without confronting or fighting the delinquents,” the report says.
Police were paid $5,000 a month by the cartel to help them smuggle drugs.
The report also slams the federal government’s human rights watchdog, the National Commission of Human Rights (better known by the Spanish acronym CNDH). “The CNDH did not fulfill its obligation to prevent violations to human rights and investigate them so as to contribute to there being justice and reparations.”
