Mexican soldiers to be prosecuted after they executed five ‘cartel members’

Mexican President André Manuel López Obrador has vowed that a group of soldiers caught on camera “executing” five alleged members of a criminal organization will be prosecuted.

The shocking May 18 video shows the victims’ black pickup truck crashing into the wall of a store at high speed in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Laredo, Texas. The military truck chasing him then crashed into the right side of the truck near the passenger door.

The men were forced out of the pickup truck, beaten, dragged across the dirt-covered ground, forced to kneel facing the wall, and later shot before the soldiers tried to cover up the scene.

“Apparently this was an execution, and that cannot be allowed,” López Obrador said at his daily morning briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City on Wednesday. “Those responsible are about to be handed over to the appropriate authorities.”

The victims were identified as José Ángel, 27; Jose Antonio, 32; Edgar Chavarria, 38; Jose Isabel, 23; and Clinton Alex, 25. The government has not released their surnames.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday that the soldiers involved in the murder of five alleged drug traffickers will be prosecuted.

On the day of the incident leading up to the massacre, multiple gunfights and roadblocks were reported to authorities, although no injuries or deaths were recorded. Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Cantún took to social media to advise residents to shelter at home and at work until authorities have a better understanding of the reported events.

According to the Mexican newspaper Proceso, Lieutenant José Nava filed an incident report with the Ministry of National Defense noting that his infantry had come under fire from alleged members of the Cartel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel) while his troops were inspecting a pickup truck it was with the five victims. During the search, Nava said the suspects tried to recover their weapons and were killed in a crossfire.

At 1:36 p.m., the pickup truck transporting the alleged drug traffickers was spotted by the security camera traveling the median and nearly collided head-on with two vehicles before slamming into the wall of the building.

A minute later, the soldiers arrive and pull the five men out of their vehicle. Two minutes passed as one of the soldiers removed a Barrett .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle, the same rifle used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in the June 2020 failed assassination plot against Omar García, Mexico City’s security chief.

The cartel members are then dragged from their vehicle.

A soldier, who appears to be in charge, can be seen instructing soldiers to line up the suspects and make them kneel facing the wall.

A black pickup truck carrying five suspected members of the Northeast Cartel slams directly into the wall of a store on May 18 after being chased by the military in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, opposite Laredo, Texas.

Soldiers drag one of five alleged cartel suspects they killed on May 18 after their pickup truck crashed into a wall

A Mexican soldier points his gun at one of the five cartel suspects executed on May 18

At 2:41 p.m., the military truck leaves the scene and the soldier who was shouting instructions is seen telling his men where to stand before the truck returns. He then gets into the truck on the left as the soldiers stay behind and begin beating the suspects.

The troops then sat down next to the pickup truck when one of them fired two shots at the ground near where the suspects were being held.

They then open fire, but their apparent attackers are nowhere to be seen. Later, the soldiers approach the suspects and aim their weapons at them.

After shooting the five men, we see the soldiers place the weapons next to their bodies. Four of the suspects were pronounced dead at the scene and a fifth died while being transported to a local hospital. He had three gunshot wounds.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies the border, said the soldiers apparently tried to alter the crime scene to make it look like there had been an armed confrontation.

“It seems that the intention was to leave these bodies with weapons to make it look like a confrontation between armed groups of civilians, as has happened before,” Correa-Cabrera said.

The killings appear to call into question López Obrador’s strategy of relying almost exclusively on the military for law enforcement.

“It is clear that the armed forces participated in the security of this city, and also that this city was never made safe,” she said. “As long as there are soldiers performing (law enforcement) duties on the street, this will continue to happen.”

The incident would be at least the second instance of alleged extrajudicial killings this year in Nuevo Laredo.

On February 26, soldiers killed five young men riding in a vehicle.

The men were apparently unarmed, and in a report, Mexico’s human rights organization said the soldiers fired at the vehicle without giving a verbal order to stop. Angry neighbors attacked the soldiers and beat some of them.

In April, federal prosecutors indicted four soldiers involved in murder.