(Ciudad Victoria) Eleven police officers were convicted Thursday in the 2021 killings of 17 Central American migrants who were shot and then burned at the border with the United States, the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office in Mexico announced.
The prosecutor’s office “obtained the conviction” of 11 police officers for murder and another was convicted for abuse of power, it said in a statement.
After a trial that lasted more than three months, judge Patricio Lugo Jaramillo gathered sufficient evidence against the former police officers, whose convictions, which will take place in the coming days, could go up to 50 years in prison.
On January 23, 2021, the Tamaulipas prosecutor’s office announced the discovery in a burned van of the charred remains of 19 people, the majority of whom were migrants who came from Guatemala to try to enter the United States illegally via Mexico.
The victims “were shot and subsequently burned,” the prosecutor’s statement said.
Among the 19 victims, the remains of two Mexicans were identified as those of the smugglers who took the migrants to the border with the United States, according to authorities.
Initially, all 12 police officers were accused of murder. But one of them agreed to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office and was convicted of abuse of power.
The state of Tamaulipas, located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, is the shortest route to the United States from the South. But the region is dangerous due to the presence of gangs who kidnap, ransom and murder migrants.
The Camargo sector, where the bodies were discovered, is disputed between the Northeast cartel, stemming from that of Los Zetas, and the Gulf cartel.
It was one of the bloodiest massacres ever seen in Mexico, after a group of 72 migrants were murdered by suspected drug traffickers, also in the state of Tamaulipas, in August 2010.