Mexico City, Jan 16 (EFE).- The Mexican government on Tuesday referred to two mass kidnappings in the south of the country, saying that the eight Colombian women who had been missing for a week in Tabasco in what appeared to be a mafia-related kidnapping now deny being victims of kidnapping or any other crime.<\/p>
Meanwhile, Luis Rodr\u00edguez, federal secretary of public security, acknowledged at the government’s morning conference that another group of nine people who disappeared from a party over the weekend in Guerrero were kidnapped by an armed group and are being searched for.<\/p>
The missing women<\/p>
The women were unaccounted for a week after attending a party in the southeastern state of Guerrero on Jan. 5.<\/p>
The journalist Ciro G\u00f3mez Leyva, on the basis of complaints from other women, denounced that the missing women were part of a group of between 50 and 70 women brought to Mexico from Colombia by a network of human traffickers, and that they had been taken to a party by a man identified as Saulo David S\u00e1nchez, known as El Jaguar.<\/p>
After the incident became public, the Colombian consulate filed a complaint with the Tabasco attorney general’s office on Friday, and Mexican authorities found the women on Saturday in an operation conducted by the Tabasco attorney general’s office with the support of the army, the National Guard, the National Intelligence Center, and the National Anti-Kidnapping Coordination.<\/p>
Even the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, took to the social networking site X (formerly Twitter) to thank Mexico “for its support” in “rescuing” the women after they were “held by the mafias,” assuring that “several traffickers have been captured.”<\/p>
At first the Secretary of Security noted that news agencies “circulated an audio recording in which one of the alleged missing women is heard communicating with a relative, asking him to pray for her” and stating that they had been “stripped of their cell phones” because of a “dispute between leaders of a criminal group.”<\/p>
But later he said that “one of them said in a video that she was under the influence of alcohol and sentimental when she communicated with her relative in Colombia. She was also surprised to learn that they were being sought by the Mexican authorities.”<\/p>
In their interviews with the Tabasco state attorney general’s office, the women “denied having been kidnapped or held against their will,” Rodr\u00edguez assured.<\/p>
He added that the women all claimed to be working legally in Mexico as escorts, where prostitution is legal, and that they “were hired for a private party” and “stayed at the party until the day they were found, which was Jan. 13,” he said.<\/p>
The official reported that only two of the women have valid residency in Mexico, so the National Migration Institute will deport the rest to Colombia for “falsifying their income declaration and carrying out paid activities” while on a visitor’s visa. <\/p>
Another mass kidnapping in Guerrero state<\/p>
The Mexican government acknowledged on Tuesday that an armed group kidnapped nine people during the weekend in Guerrero, a state in the southern Pacific coast that is experiencing a wave of massacres and disappearances at the hands of organized crime.<\/p>
“This event is confirmed, whereby nine people were deprived of their freedom by a group of armed people,” Rodr\u00edguez said during the daily government conference on Tuesday, after the Guerrero Attorney General’s Office had assured on Sunday that there were no formal complaints about the kidnapping.<\/p>
Initial reports from the Guerrero state police indicated that an armed group arrived at a party on Saturday and threatened to kill everyone present.<\/p>
The Federal Secretary of Public Security assured that “since that day (Saturday), there have been search operations for these people, with the participation of federal and state forces.”<\/p>
The mass kidnapping highlights the crisis of violence in Guerrero, where just on Jan. 6, 13 people were shot dead during a cockfight, and five burned bodies were found after an alleged confrontation between criminal groups. EFE<\/p>
ppc\/ics\/mcd<\/p>
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