Mexican President André Manuel López Obrador has vowed that a group of soldiers who were caught on camera ‘executing’ five alleged members of a criminal organization will be prosecuted.
The shocking video from May 18 showed the victims’ black pickup truck crashing at a high speed into the wall of a store in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Laredo, Texas. The military truck that was chasing it then crashed into the right side of the truck near the passenger door.
The men were forced out of the pickup, beaten, dragged across the dirt-covered ground, forced to kneel facing the wall and later shot before the soldiers tried to cover-up the scene.
‘Apparently this was an execution, and that cannot be permitted,’ López Obrador said Wednesday during his daily morning briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City. ‘Those responsible are about to be turned over to the appropriate authorities.’
The victims were identified as José Ángel, 27; José Antonio, 32; Edgar Chavarría, 38; José Isabel, 23; and Clinton Alex, 25. The government didn’t release their surnames.
Mexican soldiers aim their weapons as they approach the pickup truck carrying five alleged members of the Northeast Cartel the afternoon of May 18. The suspects, all men, were dragged out of the vehicle, beaten and forced to kneel facing a wall before they were shot
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday the soldiers who were involved in the killings of five alleged drug traffickers will be prosecuted
The day of the incident leading up to the massacre, multiple shootouts and road blockades were reported to authorities although no injuries or deaths were registered. Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Cantún took to social media to advise residents to shelter at their homes and places of employment until authorities had a better sense of the reported events.
According to the Mexican newspaper Proceso, lieutenant José Nava filed an incident report with the Ministry of National Defense and noted that his infantry had come under fire by purported members of the Cártel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel) while his troops inspected a pickup truck that was carrying the five victims. During the search, Nava said that the suspects tried to recover their weapons and were killed in a crossfire.
At 1:36 pm, the pickup truck transporting the alleged drug traffickers was spotted by the security camera passing over the median and almost crashing head-on into two vehicles before it slammed into the building wall.
A minute later, the soldiers arrive and pull the five men from their vehicle. Two minutes would pass when one of the soldiers removes a Barrett .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle, the same one used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in the June 2020 botched assassination plot of Omar García, Mexico City’s security chief.
The cartel members are then dragged away from their vehicle.
A serviceman, who appears to be the one in charge, can be seen instructing soldiers to line up the suspects and have them kneel facing the wall.
A black pickup truck carrying five alleged members of the Northeast Cartel slams directly into the wall of a store after it was being chased by the military in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, on May 18
Soldiers drag one of the five alleged cartel suspects who they killed on May 18 after their pickup truck crashed into a wall
A Mexican soldier aims his gun at one of the five cartel suspects who were executed May 18
At 2:41 pm, the military truck leaves the scene and the soldier who was yelling instructions is seen telling his men where to stand before the truck returns. He then boards the truck left while the soldiers remain behind and start beating the suspects.
The troops then set themselves next to the pickup truck when one of them fires two shots towards the ground near where the suspects were held.
They subsequently open fire but their apparent attackers are nowhere to be seen. Later, the soldiers step up to the suspects and aim their weapons at them.
After shooting the five men, the soldiers are seen placing the weapons next to their bodies. Four of the suspects were declared dead on the scene and a fifth died while he was being transported to a local hospital. He had three bullet wounds.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies the border, said the soldiers were apparently trying to alter the crime scene to make it look like there had been an armed confrontation.
‘It seems that the intention was to leave these bodies with weapons to make it look like a confrontation between armed groups of civilians, as has happened before,’ said Correa-Cabrera.
The killings appear to call into question López Obrador’s strategy of relying almost exclusively on the military for law enforcement.
‘It is clear that the armed forces have been participating in security in this city, and also that this city has never been made safe,’ she said. ‘As long as we have soldiers doing (law enforcement) duties in the streets, this is going to keep happening.’
The incident would be at least the second case of apparently extrajudicial killings in Nuevo Laredo this year.
On February 26, soldiers killed five young men who were riding inside a vehicle.
The men were apparently unarmed and in a report, Mexico’s governmental human rights agency said the soldiers had fired into the vehicle without giving verbal orders for it to stop. Angry neighbors attacked the soldiers, beating some of them.
In April, federal prosecutors charged four soldiers involved with homicide.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk