Mexico City (EFE)
“They informed me and action is already being taken, apparently there was an execution and that cannot be allowed, we are not the same as the previous governments,” the president said in his daily press conference.
López Obrador referred to the videos that Univision and El País published on Tuesday in which the military shot five people in front of a wall in Nuevo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas.
Footage shows soldiers pummeling citizens out of a van, blindfolding them, shooting them, and then placing weapons on top of them.
“It will be analyzed, but from the outset the Defense Secretariat itself is recommending that action be taken for the alleged crime of extrajudicial execution. Yes, it is the Prosecutor’s Office that is going to do its job, but there is no cover-up, because we do not tolerate the violation of human rights,” said López Obrador.
Precedents that worry in Mexico
This is not the first time that a similar event has occurred, since just last February the military also killed five young people in Nuevo Laredo.
While last April, also in Nuevo Laredo, a shooting by the National Guard left two civilians dead, including an eight-month pregnant woman.
But the Mexican ruler defended that in his government “when there is an abuse, when there is an excess, when human rights are violated, those responsible must be punished”, for which reason the last event, which occurred on May 18, is already being investigated. .
“The process to deepen the investigation has already begun and those responsible are about to make themselves available to the competent authorities. Everyone who participated, ”he assured.
Objections to the behavior of the military
The Government of López Obrador has received criticism for the growing role of the Armed Forces in public security tasks.
But the president insisted that human rights violations no longer occur in his Administration as in previous six-year terms.
“These are isolated cases and when they occur, they are punished, they are not allowed, so we are not the same,” he said.
“Before, the massacres were ordered from above, the supposed security policy was carried out by (Genaro) García Luna (former Secretary of Security from 2006 to 2012) and it was to ‘kill them on fire.’ It was war, and the wounded were being finished off, and there were executions,” he added.