Seven former Tamaulipas police officers received prison sentences for their role in the kidnapping of nine bus passengers who were later turned over to Los Zetas, tortured, killed, and dismembered in 2013. The passengers were factory workers whom the cartel mistook for rival gunmen trying to sneak into their area.
This week, a federal judge in Mexico sentenced the seven former state cops individually to various prison terms ranging from 50 to 60 years. The cops were agents with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office at the time of the kidnapping.
Agents Roberto Sanchez Partida and Martin De Leon Garcia received a sentence of 60 years in prison for the crimes of kidnapping and engaging in organized crime.
Group leader Carlos Adrian Garcia Flores and Agents Rumaldo Guadalupe Diaz Alvarado, Ricardo Contreras Hernandez, Francisco Javier Reyna Cruz, and Dony Emerson Perez Bocanegra each received a sentence of 50 years in prison.
The agents were all part of a stolen-vehicle recovery group within the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office; they also worked for Los Zetas by providing them with information and assisting with enforcement operations while in uniform.
On March 13, 2013, the agents intercepted a passenger bus that was traveling through Tamaulipas and kidnapped a group of factory workers who were traveling from the State of San Luis to Tamaulipas. The police officers turned the workers over to Los Zetas, who believed they were rivals trying to sneak into their territory. At the time, Los Zetas were carrying out a fierce turf war with their former allies in the Gulf Cartel. The fierce turf war went on for years, with each side carrying out numerous mass killings of innocent victims. Both Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel have since been labeled as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. Government.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart News Foundation traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas, including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.
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