Local Mexican police and politicians work in concert with crime gangs, student corpses burnt and dismembered. 94% of Mexican crimes aren't investigated. Worry that this news will cause investors to think Mexico is unsafe-Bloomberg

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10/6/14, "Mexico Police Helped Gang Kill 17 Students, Prosecutor Says," Bloomberg Business Week, by Brendan Case and Nacha Cattan

"Gang members acting in concert with local police allegedly killed 17 college students following a clash just over a week ago in Iguala, Mexico, a state prosecutor said. 

Forty-three students went missing following a confrontation that started Sept. 26 between students and authorities, leaving six dead in the city in Guerrero state, according to state Attorney General Inaky Blanco. He said 28 bodies were found in mass graves over the weekend in Iguala, 120 miles south of Mexico City, and are in the process of being identified. 

“This is probably the worst public security and social repression case in Mexico in many years,” Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University said in a telephone interview. “It’s far more serious because of the link between organized crime and the authorities. This could lead to the perception that there isn’t a safe enough environment to generate investment.”

 

The Iguala case will intensify the spotlight on potential human-rights violations in Mexico as the nation is already investigating the June killing of 22 people by the Mexican army, Oliva said. Federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo said last week that three soldiers would be charged in connection with the incident more than three months ago near the border of Guerrero and Mexico states, saying they “fired a series of shots that had no justification.” 

Murillo’s office is sending crime-scene experts to Iguala as part of a federal investigation, he said today. 

President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned the situation in Iguala as “painful and unacceptable” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. 

“We’ll participate in fully solving this case, finding those responsible and strictly applying the law,” Pena Nieto said in a televised message today. 

Instructions to detain the students came from a local police official named Francisco Salgado Valladares, while a crime boss nicknamed “El Chucky” ordered the killings, Blanco said in a news conference yesterday, citing alleged confessions by suspected gang members. 

Authorities are looking for Salgado Valladares and Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca, who requested leave after the incident last month. There’s also an arrest warrant for the Iguala police chief, Felipe Flores, Guerrero Governor Angel Aguirre told reporters today.

State authorities have identified 30 local police officers suspected of working with a gang called Guerreros Unidos and 22 have been arrested, Blanco said. Forensic experts are still combing the area near the mass graves in case more bodies are found, according to his press office. Some of the 28 corpses found in the graves had been burnt, while others were dismembered, the prosecutor said.

“The underlying problem here is that the municipal police appear to have been acting as a branch of organized crime,” Alejandro Hope, a former government intelligence official who is now an independent security analyst in Mexico City, said by telephone. “A high level of violence persists and the presence of organized crime remains extensive.” 

While Pena Nieto has vowed to bring down violence in Mexico, the level of impunity is little changed, according to a survey by the national statistics agency. The annual poll of Mexico residents released Sept. 30 showed 94 percent of crimes didn’t lead to investigations, up from 92 percent in each of the previous two studies.

Even as the number of killings in the country fell 16 percent in 2013 from the previous year, kidnappings rose 21 percent and extortion climbed 11 percent, according to Mexico’s Interior Ministry."



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