Piedras Negras Prison functioned as a Los Zeta's slaughterhouse, confirms a witness

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article

Subject Matter: Piedras Negras Prison, Los Zetas
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

Reporter: Zeta Redaction
Rodrigo Humberto Uribe Tapia, businessman and alleged member of Los Zetas, is a witness of the Federal Court of the District of San Antonio, Texas, in a case against the alleged Zeta leader Marciano Millan Vazquez, he confessed that the prison of Piedras Negras, Coahuila was the centre of operations for the cartel.

According to the newspaper the San Antonio Express, Uribe Tapia signalled that the prison was a "slaughterhouse" of the criminal group, as published in Apro this passed February.

Marciano Millán Vázquez

The cartel, according to the witness, assassinated and disappeared people, packing of drugs and modification of vehicles for use in drug trafficking activities.

He assured that he saw they mutilated and buried the bodies of two women and a man. "They took those bodies and carried them to the prison so they could destroy the bodies and bury them, they had vats of acid, but I don't know the process of "disappearing them", added Uribe Tapia.

This past February, Apro published that between 2009 and 2011 Los Zetas used the Piedras Negras prison as an "extermination camp", in that they improvised ovens to disappear more than 150 people among them men and women, according to the PGJ of Coahuila.

Testimony in the records of the State Prosecutor, testimony of family of the victims and the confession of the chief "pozolero", revealed that the Piedras Negras prison was transformed into a grand crematorium since the end of 2009 up until the end of 2011, a period when Humberto Moreira was Governor.

Uribe Tapia also declared at the start of this week, that the cartel of Los Zetas paid four million dollars to functionaries of Moreira to protect them.

Saul Fernandez, 21 years of age, another witness in the case against Marciano Millan, is awaiting sentencing on the charge of conspiracy to distribute marijuana. He declared that in September of 2012, under command of Los Zetas, he became the "big number" of the Piedras Negras prison.

"He told me to take two autobuses, and take them to the principal gatehouse", he related. The escape from Peidras Negras prison was because Los Zetas were left without many people, as many had defected to the Gulf Cartel after a commander defected.

Original article in Spanish at Proceso