Relatives Still Want Justice Year After Casino Blaze Agence France-Presse
go to original August 26, 2012

MONTERREY - One year after a drug cartel torched a crowded Monterrey casino, survivors and relatives of victims are angry that the suspects have yet to be convicted for the blaze that left 52 dead.

Some 200 people were playing slots and other games when eight young men brazenly walked into the Casino Royale in the northern Mexican industrial city, poured gasoline on the floor and set it alight on August 25, 2011.

Ten men and 42 women burned or choked to death in the arson, one of the biggest massacres in a drug war that has left 50,000 people dead since 2006, when the government deployed the military to take down cartels.

Survivors and relatives of victims will mark the one-year anniversary on Saturday with a church mass followed by a march to the charred casino, where they will read messages and light candles.

The ultra-violent Zetas cartel is suspected of ordering the attack in order to pressure the casino owner into paying them for the right to operate.

Founded by former elite soldiers who worked as hitmen for the Gulf cartel in the 1990s before turning on it, the Zetas have been accused of a string of killings, kidnappings and macabre brutality in recent years.

The state government of Nuevo Leon says 26 suspects are in jail awaiting justice. One alleged plotter was killed in a shootout with troops in April while authorities say the Zetas assassinated another suspect.

"It is a very positive result," said Nuevo Leon public security spokesman Jorge Domene.

But survivors and victims' relatives complain that the proceedings are moving at a snail's pace.

They also want trials for the "corrupt officials" who allowed the casino to operate without permits and emergency exits.

"We cannot talk about justice while there are no sentences against those responsible for the deaths," said Samara Perez, a survivor whose 19-year-old son died in the attack.

The families want the case handled only by the federal justice system. They complain that federal and state authorities are conducting parallel investigations, slowing down the process.

Only 40 out of 447 pieces of evidence have been processed by the courts so far.

And one of the alleged ringleaders, Carlos Oliva Castillo, known as "The Frog," has turned on his partners to become a protected witness for the prosecution, according to the newspaper Reforma.

Meanwhile, murders have continued unabated in Nuevo Leon while two new casinos have opened in the Monterrey metropolitan area since the tragedy despite a warning from state Governor Rodrigo Medina that no more should open.

"Not one more casino in Monterrey, not one more casino in Nuevo Leon," Medina promised a year ago.

There are now 60 casinos operating in Nuevo Leon, and the gamblers keep coming back.

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