Alleged Zetas and Municipal Police from Puebla Kidnap 32 Undocumented Migrants

The victims managed to escape this morning, and their testimony about the complicity of the police provoked the wrath of the population, who during the night burned a patrol car and two police motorcycles in retaliation against the authorities.

The migrants, who come from Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, were detained in the Lara Grajales municipality--50 kilometers from the capital of Puebla--while they were traveling hidden in a train coming from Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. Two municipal police searched the freight cars, forcing the stowaways off the train at gunpoint and bringing them to a safe house two blocks from the city council building.

On the property there were a dozen men with military-style haircuts--commanded by a bald and robust individual--who threatened to kill the Central Americans so that they would write down the names and telephone numbers of their families and friends in the United States. When the victims refused they began to torture them. They burned the abdomen of one of them, they stabbed the hands of others, and they beat the rest in the ribs and testicles.

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