They arrest 30 soldiers accused of forced disappearance in Mexico

Thirty servicemen from the Navy of Mexico were handed over to the Attorney General’s Office to be investigated for their alleged participation in the forced disappearance of different people in 2014 in Tamaulipas (north), the agency reported on Monday.

“30 naval elements were placed at the disposal of the General Prosecutor’s Office on April 9 in compliance with arrest warrants (…) for the alleged crime of forced disappearance of persons ”, detailed a statement from the Navy Secretariat.

It indicates that the military is being investigated for events that occurred in Nuevo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas and border with the United States, in 2014, although it does not specify a precise date, the number of people or the circumstances in which the probable enforced disappearances took place.

The Navy indicated that it decided to hand over the uniformed officers “in strict adherence to the protocol of action” so that personal personnel of the Public Prosecutor’s Office “carry out the pertinent investigations.”

Tamaulipas, marked by violence linked to drug trafficking, is one of the states where the highest number of disappeared is reported, especially on its roads that lead to the border with USA.

Most of the disappearances are attributed to drug traffickers, but law enforcement officials, especially state and municipal police, have also been charged.

This is the largest capture of military men identified as forced disappearance that has been known in recent years in Mexico.

The government had announced that arrest warrants were being prepared against the military for the disappearance, in 2014, of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school, in the southern state of Guerrero, but it has not officially reported whether they have already been carried out.

Since the end of 2006, when the government launched a controversial military anti-drug offensive, and until December of last year, Mexico had 80,517 reports of missing persons, according to official figures.

In addition, since the start of the operation and to date, more than 300,000 people have been killed, according to official figures that attribute most of these deaths to organized crime.