Mexico convicts 11 cartel gunmen in killings of 122 bus passengers near US border over 2 years

Updated 8:54 PM CDT, August 21, 2024


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican prosecutors finally won convictions — and 50-year prison sentences — Wednesday against 11 drug cartel gunmen for the 2010-2011 massacre of 122 passengers who were pulled off passing buses and forced to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers.

The sentences announced Wednesday involved one of the most gruesome chapters of Mexico’s drug war, so horrific it was hard to believe until scores of bodies were found in unmarked graves with their skulls bashed in.

Federal prosecutors said the 11 suspects were arrested between 2015 and 2017, and have been held in prison since that time. However, their trials have lasted between seven and nine years, which is not tremendously unusual in Mexico.

Prosecutors in Tamaulipas state said at the time that members of the now-splintered Zetas cartel began pulling male passengers off buses headed to the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, or Matamoros, further east.

Officials said at the time that the Zetas suspected the rival Gulf cartel was sending reinforcements on buses to the border cities they controlled. The Zetas pulled young men off the buses, questioned them, and offered some the chance to live and join the gang — if they proved their worth by fighting other innocent passengers with sledgehammers.

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