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At least eight federal police agents and an alleged criminal were captured and are being detained by civilians in the violent Mexican state of Guerrero, where locals accuse them of working for the same drug trafficking gang that supposedly abducted the 43 Ayotzinapa students last year, authorities reported.
The Federal Police Chief Enrique Galindo said talks were underway with locals for release of the agents.
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“There is no negotiation in place, there is a dialogue, explaining the situation and letting them know we have an investigation underway in the area,” Galindo said. “We are waiting for our colleagues to be released. They have not been hurt.”
The incident occurred in the mining town of Carrizalillo, in the municipality of Zumpango de Neri, where the federal police officers had arrived on a mission to arrest the head of the local cooperative farming commission, Ricardo Lopez.
Carrizalillo is just south of Iguala, where the attack on six buses took place Sept. 26. 2014. Three students were killed and 43 forcibly disappeared. | Source: Google Maps
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Over 200 angry locals protected Lopez from detention and captured the officers, accusing them of working for the local Guerreros Unidos drug cartel that in Sept. 26, 2014 abducted the Ayotzinapa teacher trainees with the help of local and state police, as well as with an unclear level of complicity of federal security forces, including the army.
Federal police arrived in the town midday on Thursday and they were accompanied by a local alleged drug trafficker identified as Modesto Peña Celso, linked to the Guerreros Unidos, a group who has been accused by the United States of smuggling heroin, cocaine and marijuana into U.S. territory in buses.
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30 disappeared in Guerrero. “Police? Drug traffickers? Does anyone in MX know the difference?” http://t.co/gRcKOLQLzA pic.twitter.com/oH2plc3dDJ
— CIP Latin America (@CIPLatinAmerica)
May 19, 2015
Lopez told local press he had been detained by police when he was headed to his office, and denounced that a federal police commander told him, “you're screwed now because you are managing drug-trafficking money.”
When the locals found out Lopez had been detained, they sounded alarm bells to alert the rest of the town inhabitants, who immediately surrounded the police officers at Lopez's home.
Lopez accused the police of attempting to extort him because he manages the revenues locals receive from the Canadian mining company Gold Corp, who rents their lands.
The locals say these same police officers are responsible for the death of three women and a man in March 26. One of the victims was an 80-year old woman named Miguela Barrios.
Lopez said that after he was detained, police took him to his house, where they fired their guns three times, shattering windows. Police found a gun at his home.
“I don't deny the gun is mine, but I have it for my personal security because a month ago Modesto Onofre Peña (the person accompanying the federal police) shot and killed my son Ricardo Lopez Vargas.”
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