Youths abducted off buses and forced into narco recruitment

Borderland Beat

In broad daylight and while a bus driver was changing a tire on the busy stretch known as the "Y" in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, gunmen entered the bus  and took six young men.

Cartel commandos are recruiting, forcibly and with impunity, abducting young passengers on highways in Tamaulipas, despite the federal surveillance in the state.  A witness described Thursday an experience he  lived that through about three weeks ago. 

"We left  around 17:00 hours in a Transpaís bus”, related the man, who requested anonymity. 

"We had left Victoria (towards Matamoros), but stopped because one of the wheels became disabled, and the bus slid off the road."  While the driver exited the bus change the tire,  said the witness, the driver of a  late model truck, came and offered help in a friendly manner, but was told help was not needed. 

About 5 or 10 minutes passed, and the man returned in the truck, but now was accompanied by two pickups and at least 10 armed men in plain clothes. 

On the bus the witness estimated there were about 20 passengers, mostly men. "Two armed men boarded the bus and asked six male youths to get off the bus. Women were ordered to stay in their places and that failure to obey would result in consequences, so they all stayed in their seats.”

“The youths who were taken off the truck obeyed orders and did not resist”, he described. 

"Through the window, I was able to see that the boy’s faces were covered with their own shirts, the commando put them into separate groups and then they shoved them into the trucks.” he said. 

Overall, the intrusion of the commando, who was unknown, lasted only about 10 minutes.

Immediately, he added, the bus operator, who had no interaction with criminals, finished changing the tire and the truck kept going. "Nobody said anything," he said. "We were all terrified and speechless by what we had just experienced." 

Reforma published yesterday that the coordinator of federal police In Tamaulipas, Norberto Luis Montoya, revealed that these recent assaults are actually actions involuntary recruitment by cartels. 

They attribute forced recruiting in Tamaulipas, is  due to infighting in criminal organizations and the battle between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, said the recruitment National Anti-kidnapping Coordinator, Renato Sales Heredia.