The judge deemed it proven that the officers shot nineteen people in 2021 in the town of Camargo, in the northern state of Tamaulipas, on the Mexican border with the United States. They then set their bodies on fire and lied about their involvement. Most of the victims were citizens of Guatemala.
The Camargo massacre was one of the worst mass killings of migrants in Mexico in recent years. The difference with other mass murders is that this time the perpetrators were police officers, El Pais emphasizes, who also lied to the authorities. One of those lies was that the bodies were already burned when they found them. The judge found them guilty of murder, abuse of power and crimes in the exercise of administrative functions. The sentence has not yet been pronounced.
The convicted officers’ lies were exposed by the statements of another police officer, Ismael Vázquez, who took part in the operation that ended the migrants’ lives. At first he agreed with his colleagues’ story, until he changed his mind and told the authorities that it was not true that the bodies had been found: it had been his companions who had murdered them and burned their bodies.