Police State They Altered Crime Scene After Killing Cartel Members, Valles de Anáhuac, Nuevo Laredo

The following is a direct translation of an article written by journalist Alberto Pradilla for Animal Politico. Although the story revolves around an event that took place in 2019, the new October 26, 2021 article reveals exclusive details.

"Our group chief gave us the instruction to place percussion casings outside the property and also to shoot at the truck that was already placed there, so that we could justify the reasons why we entered the house (...) In the van was the body of the person who answered to the nickname 'El Negro', but I have no knowledge of how he died, I also heard that our group chief gave the instruction that the vest with which he finally appeared was placed on him, but I don't know who did it either."

The truck in question which showed signs of bullet impact damage.

This is part of the statement given in November 2019 by Juan Carlos Vicenzio Zuvirie, agent of the defunct Center for Analysis, Intelligence and Studies of Tamaulipas (CAIET), and protected witness within the folder 406/2019 that investigates the massacre of Valles de Anáhuac, in Nuevo Laredo.

Vicencio Zuvirie and six other colleagues are accused of aggravated homicide, abuse of authority and falsehood in reports given to an authority and breaking and entering for the events of September 5, 2019 in which 8 people were killed. Animal Político revealed that Governor Javier García Cabeza de Vaca was the one who three weeks earlier had instructed the operation to be carried out, according to documents provided to the case. 

Zayra Guevara, on left, is a protected witness while Jose Gonzalez, on right, is currently jailed for his commanding of the operation.

The officer and two other police officers (Zayra Concepción Guevara Garza and Azariel Urbina Arguelles) are protected witnesses, so they have avoided prison so far. The elements José Rafael González Villapando (who was in command in the operation) and Ricardo Guadalupe Mendoza Aguirre are in jail, while Edith Esteban Cruz and Francisco Hernández Carbajal are wanted and a reward of 250 thousand pesos is being offered. 

Two officers, Francisco Hernández and Edith Esteban, who are still on the run. 

Animal Político had access to the statements of the three agents, included within the investigation folder 406/2019, in the hands of the State Attorney General's Office (FGE) of Tamaulipas. In them, they maintain the version initially disseminated by the Secretariat of Public Security and assure that the deaths were caused by a confrontation and that there were no extrajudicial executions. "What was communicated to the public by the state government on the day of the events is not entirely different from reality," said Vizencio Zuvirie. 

This second account, however, already includes several elements that differ from the official explanation. The police admit that they made arrests in three houses and not only in the one where the massacre took place; they recognize that they altered the scene by order of a superior and they assure they have no idea how one of the victims died, who was found dead in the middle of the police cordon, on top of a van that had been taken there by the agents. This second version, however, also differs from the statements of 14 eyewitnesses who are also included in the case. 

The Operation According To The Police-Witnesses 

Around 5:00 a.m., a CAIET team escorted by at least twenty soldiers went to a house in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Nuevo Laredo. According to the police, the detachment is made up of the seven agents charged by the FGE and they are looking for high caliber weapons that are allegedly in the possession of the Northeast Cartel. Upon breaking into this first home, they found a person named Enrique Pérez Chávez, nicknamed "El Negro", who they consider to be a member of organized crime and who was guarding a vehicle with handmade armor plating.

Interior of one of the homes where men were taken by the CAIET agents, El Siglo

He allegedly assured them that the weapons were in a second house, this time in the Buenavista neighborhood, where they went. There, according to the version of the agents, they capture Luis Fernando Hernández Viezca, who directs them to a third home: the house where the massacre took place in Valles de Anáhuac.

The three policemen agree in testifying that, upon arriving at this third house, they are attacked by armed civilians and that, in the middle of the shooting, Hernandez Viezca is able to escape from custody and enter the house, from where he also begins to shoot. In the end, the seven people inside the house (four men and three women) are killed.

In addition, the body of Pérez Chávez appears, with a bulletproof vest that some police put on him, on the armored vehicle that had been moved from the Buenos Aires neighborhood, located about 8 kilometers away. As revealed by Animal Político, the investigation folder includes statements that point to Captain José Jorge Ontiveros Molina, current Secretary of Public Security of the government of Tamaulipas, as the officer who requested the tow truck to move this vehicle. 

"We did not execute anyone, we did not torture them, much less hold them down and we did not dress them, the women we found in the last address were already there and the tactical equipment with which they were shot down was their property", declared Azariel Urbina Arguelles, who assured that the accounts offered by the witnesses are "false".  

After this supposed confrontation, the head of the operation, Gonzalez Villapando, instructed his subordinates to plant percussion caps outside and shoot at the armored car to simulate a shootout that, according to this version, had taken place minutes before. The reason? To justify a raid on a house without a warrant, alleging that they had been attacked. One of the details that generate more doubts about this version is the appearance of Perez Chavez's corpse in the middle of an area cordoned off by the Army and without the police officers who are there being able to specify who killed him. 

In order to become witnesses, the agents promised to give details about the decisions adopted by their superior Gonzalez Villapando, about the circumstances of the death of the eight people, about the transfer of the armored truck and in relation to the participation of members of the Army in the operation, something which has not yet occurred. 

 

The Contradictions 

The accounts provided by the police-witnesses clash with the versions of 14 people who were in or near the homes that were raided during the operation. According to these testimonies, Enrique Pérez Chávez was not the only one in the first apartment; Wilbert Irraestro Pérez, José Daniel Saucedo Martínez, Juana Yatzel Graciano Magaña, Jennifer Hazel Romero López and Cinoy Esmeralda Briseño Chapa were also renting rooms.

All of them were allegedly taken first to the home of Luis Fernando Hernández Viesca and later to the home of Severiano Treviño Hernández, where they allegedly ended their lives. Kassandra Treviño, daughter of the last victim, told Animal Político how the CAIET agents broke into her home and forced her to leave it, after beginning to beat her father. It would be the last time he saw him alive. "They can't go around killing innocent people just because. Let them pay for what they did," he declared on the one-year anniversary of the massacre.

What happened in that house will have to be determined by a judge, although elements that appear in the investigation file call into question the official version. On the one hand, the alleged shooting. The expert reports included in the file rule out that the façade of the house where the massacre took place was hit by bullets. That is to say, there is no trace of the alleged shooting but there are shots inside the rooms, where the lifeless bodies of the victims were found.

On the other hand, six of the eight victims had marks on their wrists as a sign of having been previously tied up. Although the agents-turned-witnesses deny it in their statements, the necropsies reveal the marks of the straps on the wrists.

US-Navy Training and Torture Allegations

This is not the only case in which the special operations group of the Tamaulipas state police has been accused of serious human rights violations.

Its members have been accused of disappearances in Ciudad Mier or of the massacre of 19 people (17 of them migrants) in Camargo. The documents included in the investigation file allow us to know a little better the profile of its agents. All of them report having been trained in a previous course of the Secretariat of the Navy, after which they received their certificate of aptitude.

The role of this body is also being investigated, as currently 30 elements, alleged members of the Special Operations Unit are in prison accused of the disappearance of four people. Between January and June 2018 there are at least 47 complaints of disappearance and, of these, 12 people were allegedly extrajudicially executed.

Another of the strong links of these agents is with the United States. In fact, one of the three police officers turned witness indicates that he took a course taught by the FBI. This is not a novelty, since according to Vice News, several of the officers of the Special Operations Group (GOPES, successor to CAIET) accused of the massacre in Camargo, Tamaulipas, in February 2021, also received instruction north of the Rio Bravo. This was not an impediment for the maximum responsible for the body, Felix Arturo Rodriguez Rodriguez, to be recognized by the DEA and the HSI in an event at the consulate in Matamoros.  

The file also includes a relevant fact: two of the seven police officers charged with the murders had previous complaints for torture: specifically, the head of the operation had an open investigation in 2019 and Vicenzo Zuvirie had two others, also that same year.

Source: Alberto Pradilla for Animal Politico