Authorities in Mexico on Wednesday formally accused seven state police officers of torturing three women who survived a confrontation a year ago in which soldiers allegedly killed at least a dozen suspected gang members after they surrendered.
Four of the police officers have been detained and a judge is expected to issue an arrest warrant for the other three, according to a statement from the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico State, where the killings took place.
The charges come a year after the bloodshed at a warehouse on June 30 last year.
In November last year, three soldiers were charged with aggravated homicide and four others, including a lieutenant, were charged with “actions improper to the public service” for failing to report the killings.
There have been no trials.
The incident was first described as a gunbattle that began when suspects fired on an army patrol.
The army said 22 suspects died during a “fierce firefight,” but only one soldier was wounded.
Questions about the killings, known as the “Tlatlaya case” after the rural township where they occurred, were first brought to light by a news story in July last year that reported on apparent contradictions in the army’s account.
Journalists who visited the scene three days later found little evidence of a long gunbattle. Bullet holes in the walls showed the same pattern: One or two closely placed bullet holes surrounded by spattered blood, giving the appearance that some of those killed had been standing against a wall and shot at about chest level.
The Mexican government’s Human Rights Commission later reported that its investigation determined that at least 12 and probably 15 people had been executed at the warehouse.
Three women who survived came forward to say that agents of the Mexico State Prosecutors’ Office had tortured them to support the army’s version. The state has said it is considering payments to the women, while Mexico’s Executive Commission of Attention to Victims is to pay about US$3.2 million to the families of all 22 people killed.
In related news, a judge on Mexico’s Federal Judiciary Council ordered the release of the alleged second-in-command of Mexico’s most violent drug cartel, judicial officials said on Wednesday.
However, prosecutors said they would appeal the ruling and detained Ruben Oseguera Gonzalez for questioning in another case involving two people who went missing in the western state of Michoacan.
It would have been the second time the cartel leader’s son has been released.
Oseguera Gonzalez and another man were arrested on June 23 on various charges, including weapons possession and organized crime.
However, on Wednesday, the Federal Judiciary Council said a judge found insufficient evidence to hold Oseguera Gonzalez for trial.
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