Mexican court orders soldiers re-arrested in army massacre
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A court in Mexico ordered the re-arrest of seven soldiers on abuse of authority charges for the 2014 army killings of suspects in a grain warehouse.
The ruling made public Thursday re-opens the thorny question of army executions, just two days after the army killed 14 suspects in a lopsided shootout in the southern state of Guerrero.
The June 2014 massacre involved soldiers who killed 22 suspects at the warehouse in the town of Tlatlaya. While some died in an initial shootout with the army patrol — in which one soldier was wounded — a human rights investigation later showed that at least eight and perhaps as many as a dozen suspects were executed after they surrendered.
"This ruling confirms what survivors and rights organizations have been saying for five years, that there were illegal executions," said the MA Pro human rights group. "It shows that civilian and military authorities covered up the homicides."
The soldiers had been acquitted or had civilian criminal charges against them dismissed years ago, though three were still serving sentences for military-code violations.
But relatives of two of the victims appealed the dismissal of the civilian criminal charges. They won last week's ruling, which was only made public Thursday.
The court also ordered three of the seven soldiers to also stand trial on charges of altering evidence at the crime scene.
Investigations showed survivors and witnesses had been threatened and tortured, bodies moved and weapons planted at the scene. Forensic evidence showed many of the dead had been lined up against walls and shot while raising their hands in instinctive acts of self-defense.
However, Juan Ibarrola, a newspaper columnist and expert on Mexico's armed forces, said that given the difficulty of...