Twelve police officers in the Mexican city of Tamaulipas near the US border are under arrest on charges of mass murder. It is believed that they shot 19 people and then burned their bodies, El Pais reports.
The burnt corpses were found piled up in a truck at the end of January. 16 of them belonged to men, one to a woman, and two more were so badly burned that it was not possible to establish gender. The police have identified the four victims: two of them were natives of neighboring Guatemala.
The police did not specify what motive the murderers might have had. However, the publication indicates that the area where the bodies were found is the territory of a long-standing feud between drug cartels. Crime syndicates use migrants to transport illegal substances and collect money from them for passage through their territory. Those who refuse to pay or cooperate are often killed to intimidate, and every cartel has links with corrupt police officers.
In December last year, investigative journalists learned that the Mexican authorities had purchased spyware under the guise of fighting crime, but with its help monitored journalists and activists, and provided surveillance services to cartels or even reselling the software to them.
