The government’s human rights agency is accusing federal police of executing at least 22 people during a confrontation with suspected cartel criminals previous year and then rearranging the scene by moving bodies and planting guns to support the official version of the bloodshed.
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“The investigation confirmed facts that show grave human rights violations attributable to public servants of the federal police”, commission President Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez said.
It says about two dozen suspected drug cartel members were executed by federal police officers.
In May past year, federal police ambushed suspected members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel holed up at Rancho El Sol near the small town of Tanhuato in the violent western state of Michoacan and killed 42 men.
Previously, the government said there had been no human rights violations during the raid on the ranch.
Police used a Black Hawk helicopter during the operation, reportedly firing some 4,000 rounds into the ranch, known as the Rancho del Sol, during the initial assault.
Gonzalez said police lied about their role during the incident at the ranch, where they moved seven bodies and shifted weapons to manipulate the crime scene.
Renato Sales, Mexico’s national security commissioner, rejected the human rights abuses accusations on Thursday. One officer was killed during the incident.
According to a report [report, Spanish] issued by Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission [official website, Spanish], 22 civilians were executed during a May 2015 drug raid in Michoacan.
Officers said they had returned fire in self-defence but the high death toll aroused suspicions.
“It’s systematic and hopefully this will put a brake on the excesses and abuses by the federal police”, said a senior Mexican law enforcement official who declined to be named. Fifty-four officers arrived. “They acted in legitimate defense”.
In the weeks before, the cartel had hit security forces hard, including shooting down an army helicopter, killing six soldiers.
A helicopter killed at least five people, the report says. One victim died of burns that the commission believes came after he was shot but still alive.
The government had initially refused to release autopsy reports on those killed.
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The army’s version was that 22 suspects died in a gunfight in which only one soldier was wounded.
