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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Ex-Members of Guatemalan Forces Held
 Wire services
| | "Kaibiles," Guatemala's crack counter-insurgency troops and self-styled "messengers of death," march in Army Day ceremonies in Guatemala City. |
Security officials said Tuesday they have detained five former members of an elite Guatemalan counterinsurgency unit known for its brutality. They said the men may have been invited to Mexico to work with the feared drug hit men known as the Zetas.
The detention of the Guatemalans who were turned over to prosecutors for possible immigration violations fueled fears that the paratroopers, known as "Kaibiles," might add their military expertise to that already enjoyed by the Zetas, themselves led by deserters from an elite Mexican army unit.
The Zetas have been waging a bloody turf war in border towns such as Nuevo Laredo against other gangs for control of lucrative smuggling routes.
"There is a group of 'Kaibil' soldiers in Guatemala ... who apparently want to be invited to work," Defense Secretary Gerardo Clemente Vega told Mexican senators. "These Guatemalans want to work for the Zetas."
"We have to be careful with this group. We can't confirm it yet, but all the appearances are there," Clemente Vega said.
"We are paying a lot of attention, and there was already a group of five of them who were detained and were turned over to prosecutors," he said.
Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca confirmed there were five Guatemalans and perhaps as many as seven who "were detained because they were apparently not in the country legally, and we are investigating what they were doing."
Jorge Ortega Gaitán, director of the Information Department of the Guatemalan Army, said his country's armed forces had not been officially informed.
"Only when we have official information from the Mexican government will we be able to confirm whether these people were in fact military personnel on active duty, or if they are exKaibiles or if, in fact, they have no connection with the Guatemalan Army," said Ortega Gaitán.
The Kaibiles were created in the 1970s; their name is derived from that of a rebel Maya prince, Kaibil Balam.
The unit was implicated in several of the massacres and human rights abuses committed by government forces during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war.
The force became famous for its exhausting and some say brutal jungle survival training regimen, in which trainees are reportedly forced to live alone in the jungle armed with only a knife and eat whatever prey they can catch. |
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