Federales Again Face Claims of Possible Extrajudicial Killings in Michoacan Dudley Althaus and Santiago Perez - The Wall Street Journal
go to original May 26, 2015

Mexico Police Say Killing of 42 Criminals Was Gun Battle, Not Massacre (wochit News)

Relatives of 42 suspected gang members who were killed by federal police alleged the men were not killed in a firefight, as the government said, but rather were massacred.

As their funerals took place in this small city in western Mexico on Monday, authorities attempted to dispel growing speculation about possible extrajudicial killings in the confrontation at an isolated ranch in Michoacán state.

National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido on Monday said forensic tests showed all 42 suspected drug-gang members had fired weapons and were killed by long-range shots. Officials said one officer was killed.

But photographs published in the Mexican press purportedly showed many of the dead fell face down, suggesting they had been running when they died. The photos, in which many of them were shown in their underwear, shirtless and without shoes, fueled speculation by relatives that Mexican police hadn’t killed them in a firefight, but rather, as they slept.

“Perhaps they had committed some sort of crime, but the federales should have arrested them, not killed them like this, in cold blood and in such a brutal way,” said Teresa Tejada, the mother of a 29-year-old man who was killed on Friday. “They massacred them.”

Relatives of many of the men said they weren’t in gangs and hadn’t had previous problems with the law.

Read the rest at The Wall Street Journal

Photo: Teresa Tejada mourns her son, Victor Hugo Reynoso, 29, at one of the many funerals held Monday in Ocotlán, the small city that many of the 42 suspected gunmen killed Friday called home. (Dudley Althaus/The Wall Street Journal)

Related: Bodies of Criminals Killed in Michoacán are Returned to Their Families (El Universal)

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