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Prisoners and guards let out of a prison in Durango at night are being tied to at least three massacres in Torreon, Coahuila according to Mexican press reports.
Only a few days ago a video from groups associated with the criminal gang Los Zetas surfaced on the Internet in which a Lerdo, Durango police officer, Rodolfo Najera, told gang members that people from the Durango Centro de Readaptacion Social (CERESO) No.2 in Gomez Palacio were involved in the planning and execution of the July 18th Torreon massacre in which 17 people were shot to death. In the same video Najera was executed.
On Thursday, Mexican Federal agents, soldiers and local police descended on the CERESO and placed under arrest 35 people, four of them top prison officials, including Margarita Rojas Rodriguez, the top prison official.
Rojas Rodriguez was placed in 20 days preventative detention, a Federal legal device used against those charged with serious crimes, along with three other prison officials: Roberto Enrique Sahuayo, head of security and surveillance, Francisco Carlos Alberto Uranga, deputy director, and Jose Guadalupe Ordaz Rivas, head of security and surveillance.
Formal charges have not been filed. Preventative detention is a means of detaining persons until formal charges can be brought.
However, during a Sunday press conference in Mexico City, Mexican Secretary of Interior Franscisco Blake, specifically said Rojas Rodriguez gave permission for the excursions. Sunday evening the current governor of Durango, Ismael Hernandez Deras, called the prison officials "traitors".
According to officials with the Mexican national attorney general, Procuraduria General de la Republica (PGR), weapons assigned to prison guards have already been linked to the July 18th massacre at Quinta Italia in in east Torreon, the May 15th massacre at the Juanas bar in Torreon with eight dead and another massacre at the Ferri bar, also in Torreon, in January which also killed eight.
PGR officials say that prisoners and guards were used to settle scores, being let out nightly to carry out attacks, although press reports did not elaborate. Official vehicles were also used in attacks as well.