Your request has been blocked by our security system due to potential security concerns Please contact us for assistance the past five years of President Felipe Calderon's drug war have been marked by brutal violence unsolved kidnappings and tens of thousands of deaths Most of the violence has come from the drug gangs but some of these atrocities have been committed by the Mexican military and police Human rights groups say that as state security forces battle the drug cartels abducted and killed criminal suspects and even innocent civilians The city of Sabinas Hidalgo is stuck in the arid northern plateau of Mexico roughly halfway between the industrial hub of Monterrey and the U.S It's a place many Mexicans abandon in favor of trying to find work north of the Rio Grande 22-year-old taxi driver Jesus Victor Llano Munoz was also considering heading north but instead he was arrested by the Mexican navy and hasn't been heard from since a group of Mexican marines were searching the San Angel motel in Sabinas for drug suspects when Jesus Victor pulled his cab into the driveway of the motel also a taxi driver named Jesus Victor Llano was parked at a taxi stand across the street "My son had just dropped off some passengers from his taxi," Llano says when the marines ordered Jesus Victor into the back of a gray military pickup truck Llano says he pleaded with one of the officers to let his son go He recalls the officer rudely telling him that if his son had done nothing wrong But then the marines started driving out of the parking lot Llano says he ran alongside the convoy of pickups and that was the last I saw of him," he says The Mexican navy not only says they don't have Jesus Victor Officials with the navy didn't respond to repeated calls by NPR regarding the case has been involved in routine drug enforcement operations across Mexico ever since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in 2006 but six months after his son was whisked away in a military pickup truck more than 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence Most of the disappeared were abducted by criminal gangs but the country's human rights commission says hundreds also vanished after being detained by security forces Federal policemen escort the armored car carrying a member of Los Zetas drug cartel in June The security forces have been accused of abuses in the fight against the drug cartels the New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting more than 200 cases of kidnapping torture and extrajudicial killings by the military and police the Mexico and Cuba researcher with Human Rights Watch says investigations by Mexican authorities into these alleged abuses go nowhere "And the message that that sends to the armed forces state and local level is: You can do whatever you need to do so long as it's in the name of public security Just after Human Rights Watch released its report a crew from the Mexican television channel Milenio TV filmed police torturing several suspects after a shootout in Mexico City a half-dozen uniformed officers are holding a young man The suspect is on his knees in front of a bucket of water His hands are bound behind his back with black tape The officers repeatedly shove his head into the bucket and hold it there Elva Davila Alves says police used similar techniques to force her son to confess to murder her son Marcelo was arrested by plainclothes police in Monterrey The next time she saw him was more than a week later in jail He was beaten and bruised over his whole body Marcelo had voluntarily gone to the police and admitted to killing a fellow student at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon Marcelo's lawyer and family say he was abducted including having his head submerged in water until he confessed to the murder they say he made up an extravagant story about how he hired a cartel hit man in a city park for roughly $300 along with phone records that allegedly showed him making calls to an unidentified hit man says she knows the police tortured her son but she's afraid of retribution against her family if she pursues legal action against the cops and the conditions inside the prisons aren't very secure," she says "Because of this we haven't made any formal legal complaint against the officers who did this to our son." the police refused to let Davila take pictures of her son or have him examined by an independent doctor Marcelo's family has filed an appeal of his conviction After the Human Rights Watch report came out in November denouncing systematic abuse by security forces in Mexico President Calderon's office issued a statement saying the real abuse of human rights in Mexico is by brutal organized criminals Calderon himself has launched a series of town hall-style television appearances where he's addressed the accusations of abuse He says his forces respect the human rights of everyone "The only way we can win this battle is to confront the criminals with the full force of the government Human rights groups say Calderon needs to do more to control his security forces if he wants to hold on to that moral high ground Become an NPR sponsor Resurfacing work coupled with a multiple-vehicle collision brought traffic to a virtual standstill in both directions this morning on the highway between Monterrey The road work started early this morning between the 53 and 57-kilometer markers on the highway leaving just one northbound and one southbound lane open a bus and two cars were involved in an accident at the northbound 68-kilometer marker in the Nuevo León municipality of Sabinas Hidalgo that left three people with minor injuries One truck was transporting ice that spilled on to the highway one of the lanes in the accident zone had been reopened but traffic jams continued truckers and other motorists had taken to social media to vent their frustration about the snarled conditions One truck driver traveling from Nuevo Laredo to Saltillo said he expected his travel time to double from five hours to 10 border chose to pull over and wait until the highway was cleared and traffic conditions improved one local salesman took advantage of a captive market by selling drinks and snacks stacked onto a hand truck going for as much as 18 pesos (US $0.88) a pop Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp) ADVERTISE WITH MND COMMUNITY GUIDELINES Subscription FAQ's Privacy Policy Mexico News Daily - Property of Tavana LLC Human rights commission: More than 5,300 people have disappeared in five years Parents band together in their search for answers Missing victims' families are vocal members of a national peace movement Hope that their loved ones may be found alive fuels their fervor '+n.escapeExpression("function"==typeof(o=null!=(o=r(e,"eyebrowText")||(null!=l?r(l,"eyebrowText"):l))?o:n.hooks.helperMissing)?o.call(null!=l?l:n.nullContext||{},{name:"eyebrowText",hash:{},data:t,loc:{start:{line:28,column:63},end:{line:28,column:78}}}):o)+" \n '+(null!=(o=c(e,"if").call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2PreText"):l,{name:"if",hash:{},fn:n.program(32,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:63,column:20},end:{line:63,column:61}}}))?o:"")+"\n"+(null!=(o=(c(e,"ifAll")||l&&c(l,"ifAll")||n.hooks.helperMissing).call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Text"):l,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Link"):l,{name:"ifAll",hash:{},fn:n.program(34,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:64,column:20},end:{line:70,column:30}}}))?o:"")+" At least 71 people have gone missing this year on a highway between Mexico’s industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo Earlier estimates by relatives of the victims – at least half a dozen of whom are US residents – had placed the number of disappeared so far this year at around 50 The head of Mexico’s National Search Commission said most of the missing are men who drove trucks or taxis on a road that local media have dubbed “the highway of death” Quintana said investigations are focusing on a point near where the highway enters Nuevo Laredo which has long been dominated by the Northeast drug cartel Quintana said the disappearances may be related to turf battles between the Jalisco and Northeast cartels But the missing also include women and children and men driving private cars has issued a bulletin seeking information on the disappearance of a Laredo and her 16-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter who were last seen setting out on the highway on June 13 They had visited relatives in Sabinas Hidalgo and were returning to Texas in their car when they vanished activists say about a half dozen men have reappeared alive and badly beaten after being abducted on the highway and all they will say is that armed men forced them to stop on the highway and took their vehicles Despite alerts from relatives of the missing didn’t warn people against travelling on the highway until almost a month later Authorities have since increased policing and security on the highway and the June shooting of 15 apparently innocent bystanders in the border city of Reynosa suggest Mexico is returning to the dark days of the 2006-2012 drug war when cartel gunmen often targeted the general public as well as one another “It’s no longer between the cartels; they are attacking the public,” said activist Angelica Orozco Given the propensity of cartels in the region to incinerate the bodies of their victims it is not clear that if those who disappeared on the highway are dead whether their bodies could ever be found Quintana revealed that at a point farther east along the border authorities have excavated a shocking half-ton (500 kilogrammes) of burned bone fragments Quintana described the bone dumping ground at a spot near the border city of Matamoros as a “place of extermination” The total number of people who have gone missing in Mexico since 2006 and have never been found stands at almost 87,855 Officials in the early 2000s were often quick to repeat an old belief that drug cartels only killed each other a belief that apparently hasn’t completely died Assistant Interior Secretary Alejandro Encinas said that almost 80 per cent of present-day killings “are associated with criminal activities” View the discussion thread.