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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
Kidnap Victims Now Target Of Investigationt
 Wire services
| | A crowd gathers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, awaiting word on kidnap victims who had recently been freed. (Photo: Luis J. Jimenez/Copley News Service) |
Forty-four people rescued by police from two safe houses in Nuevo Laredo are being investigated by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) for possible criminal ties, officials said Tuesday.
Arriving here in the pre-dawn hours, the ex-captives will be interrogated by officials from the organized crime division of the PGR's office.
A spokesman for that division told EFE on Tuesday that it would take between 48 and 72 hours to determine if any of the former captives should face any criminal charges. Gerardo Ibańez said that of the total of 44 people freed, one who had been tortured by his captors was hospitalized in Nuevo Laredo and so was not transported to the capital.
The others were placed at the disposition of law enforcement authorities in the capital, where the three captors Marco Antonio Tapia, Fidel Torres and Miguel Ángel Ábrego Chávez must also undergo interrogation to determine if they are members of a drug cartel, as officials suspect.
Federal authorities said that the 44 former hostages were "lifted by Nuevo Laredo municipal police and some other armed persons whom they identified as members of the so-called 'Zetas' band."
The Zetas is a group comprised of former soldiers who work as hired gunmen for the drug cartels. Ironically, most of the Zetas appear to be veterans of or deserters from an elite army unit created to wage the war on drugs.
Sunday night's rescue operation in Nuevo Laredo was mounted by about 200 federal agents and army troops.
The rescue was carried out within the scope of Operation Safe Mexico, which the government launched on June 11 in the border states of Baja California Norte and Tamaulipas. |
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