Mass escape engineered at Mexican prison

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Registered: 03-23-2003
Mass escape engineered at Mexican prison
Thu, 01-08-2004 - 12:06pm

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Mexico%20Mass%20Escape


Tuesday, January 6, 2004 · Last updated 8:43 p.m. PT


Mass escape engineered at Mexican prison


By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


MEXICO CITY -- A mass escape engineered by a gang of soldiers-turned-drug traffickers was designed to free five Gulf Cartel killers, Mexico's government said Tuesday.


At least 25 men dressed in police-type uniforms overpowered guards at a west Mexican prison Monday and freed 25 inmates, Enrique Bautista, secretary of government for Michoacan state told W Radio in Mexico City.


At least one person was killed in a shootout at the Michoacan state prison in Apatzingan, 200 miles west of Mexico city, officials said.


Six of the escaped prisoners were recaptured, but some of those remaining at large "are highly dangerous," Bautista said.


The raid was apparently aimed at freeing five killers from the Gulf Cartel, a drug-dealing group, Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said.


Vasconcelos said a band of army deserters was linked to the attack, but officials were not sure if they had carried out the raid themselves or trained those who did.


"Either they participated or they advised Carlos Rosales, who is the arm of the Gulf organization in Michoacan," Vasconcelos said.


The Zetas are led by former members of an elite paratroop and intelligence battalion that was posted to the border state of Tamaulipas in the 1990s to fight drug traffickers.


In October, Vasconcelos said that about 31 of the estimated 350 members of the Special Air Mobile Force Group posted to Tamaulipas in the 1990s had deserted and joined the drug turf war.