Mexico drug gang beheads, mutilates bodies
MEXICO CITY, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Suspected drug smugglers have dumped the beheaded or mutilated bodies of five people around the Mexican capital in recent days in what appear to be revenge killings for a cocaine seizure at the airport.
The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs firm were found near Mexico City airport on Saturday while their bodies appeared just outside the city.
One of the heads had an index finger stuffed in its mouth and the other had a finger in its ear.
Mexico's attorney general said over the weekend agents had seized half a ton of cocaine found at the airport on a flight from Colombia.
Three other bodies, two of them headless and without an index finger, were found this week in Tlalnepantla on the edge of the city. The hands of the third body were chopped off. These three bodies have not been identified.
"By the way they were killed, it leads us to believe they were informants or that (drug dealers) were trying to send a message," Elena Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Tlalnepantla municipality, said on Wednesday. "'Listen, see, don't talk,' that's their motto," she said.
Mexico has been blighted by beheadings and other gory killings in a 3-year-old war between drug gangs for control of smuggling routes to the United States.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to violence hot spots.
While the operations have led to a string of high-profile busts, drug violence has still killed around 2,500 people this year.
On Wednesday, the attorney general's office said it had seized nearly 2 million pills of over-the-counter cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make the highly addictive methamphetamine. (Reporting by Cyntia Barrera Diaz; Editing by Eric Beech)
The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs firm were found near Mexico City airport on Saturday while their bodies appeared just outside the city.
One of the heads had an index finger stuffed in its mouth and the other had a finger in its ear.
Mexico's attorney general said over the weekend agents had seized half a ton of cocaine found at the airport on a flight from Colombia.
Three other bodies, two of them headless and without an index finger, were found this week in Tlalnepantla on the edge of the city. The hands of the third body were chopped off. These three bodies have not been identified.
"By the way they were killed, it leads us to believe they were informants or that (drug dealers) were trying to send a message," Elena Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Tlalnepantla municipality, said on Wednesday. "'Listen, see, don't talk,' that's their motto," she said.
Mexico has been blighted by beheadings and other gory killings in a 3-year-old war between drug gangs for control of smuggling routes to the United States.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to violence hot spots.
While the operations have led to a string of high-profile busts, drug violence has still killed around 2,500 people this year.
On Wednesday, the attorney general's office said it had seized nearly 2 million pills of over-the-counter cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make the highly addictive methamphetamine. (Reporting by Cyntia Barrera Diaz; Editing by Eric Beech)
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