(Tuxtla Gutiérrez) Sixteen Mexican police employees kidnapped Tuesday in the state of Chiapas (south) were released Friday, announced the governor of the state.
“I want to announce to the people of Chiapas and Mexico that the 16 colleagues of the [secrétariat à la Sécurité et à la Protection citoyenne] abductees were released this afternoon,” Governor Rutilio Escandon said on Twitter.
Local TV channels broadcast live the reunion between the released people and their families.
Some employees were showing signs of fatigue, AFP found.
“My brother is currently in the ambulance. They are checking his vital signs because he is hypertensive,” Benecia Rincon, sister of one of the freed hostages, told a local television station.
On Twitter, the governor also thanked “President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican Army, Navy, National Guard, State Prosecutors and Police for their collaboration,” but did not elaborate on how. whose police employees were released.
A thousand members of the state and federal security forces have participated since Wednesday in operations to rescue the hostages, kidnapped in Ocozocoautla while they were traveling on a bus after their day of work.
Of the 33 passengers, the 17 women also on board the bus had been released.
Videos in which the victims appear were then broadcast by Mexican media. In one of them, one of the hostages had explained that the kidnappers were demanding the resignation or dismissal of three Chiapas police chiefs, accused of holding a woman hostage as part of a secret agreement with a another armed group.
In response, the Mexican president had offered Thursday to open an investigation into the three police chiefs on the condition that the kidnappers release the hostages. “The authority of the State and we (the federal government, editor’s note), will also investigate the behavior of the three officials who are accused of being accomplices” of an armed group, he had declared in a press conference.
The region of Ocozocoautla, where clashes between police and armed criminals have recently multiplied, is particularly known to be a transit zone for illegal immigration and drug trafficking.