Mexico mass kidnap: 11 young people mysteriously disappear, parents protest, The Mexico mass kidnap of 11 young people, a 16-year-old boy, four young women, and six young men, has parents protesting and calling for Mexican authorities to find their loved ones.
"How could so many people have disappeared, just like that, in broad daylight? The police say they don't have them, so what, the earth just opened up and swallowed them?" said Josefina Garcia, the mother of 19-year-old Said Sanchez Garcia who is her only son and who is among the 11 taken in the Mexico mass kidnap, reported the Associated Press via Yahoo! News on May 30, 2013.
“Calling for authorities to find their loved ones, family members marched Thursday morning from the Interior Department building to the Zocalo, the city's main square. Later they protested outside the bar, which bears a sign that reads Bicentenario Restaurante-Bar, and demanded to see the bar's surveillance video.”
On Sunday morning between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., Josefina Garcia’s 19-year-old son was one of the young people who was in the Bicentenario Restaurante-Bar which is in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa district “just off the Paseo de la Reforma, the city's main boulevard, near the Angel of Independence monument and only about 1½ blocks from the U.S. Embassy.”
According to Josefina Garcia and other relatives, the group of young people was herded out onto the street by waiters and bar employees and armed men forced them into waiting vehicles and drove them away.
According to Leticia Ponce, the mother of the 16-year-old boy who is one of the young people of the Mexico mass kidnap, her son was not in a street gang and she also insisted that gunmen had taken them away. “It was definitely an armed group, we don't know from where. They arrived at the bar and told them there would be a (police) operation." The 16-year-old’s mother told MVS radio that she urged Mexican authorities to look at security camera footage.
According to Isabel Fonseca, whose brother is also one of the young people of the Mexico mass kidnap, one young man who was able to escape Sunday’s kidnapping told her that masked men in several white SUVs took the young people.
Unlike the parents and relatives, Mexican authorities seem to know very little.
According to Rodolfo Rios, who is Mexico City's chief prosecutor, “investigators had been able to glean very little information on the disappearances.”
According to Mexico City's chief prosecutor, “police had not located any employees of the bar and no other witnesses had presented themselves. We aren't sure what exactly occurred. No witness has come forward to say anything about any armed gang."
While Mexican authorities know so little, the residents of Tepito where the young people are from are saying that there have been several abductions of young people in the neighborhood in recent months. Young people disappear even if they do not have any gang, crime, or drug affiliation. Neighborhood residents believe that the abductions are related to organized crime activities.
On May 30, the Mexican newspaper Reforma is reporting that one of the young people of the Mexican mass kidnap is Jerzy Ortiz Ponce, the son of Jorge Ortiz Reyes, "El Tanque" (the Tank), a leading drug dealer and Tepito iconic killer who is currently in prison.
A preliminary report by Reforma indicates that Jorge Ortiz Reyes’s youngest son was in the Colonia Juárez with Alan Omar Athiencia, who in turn is said to be in a romantic relationship with a 16-year-old girl in the area.
The parents whose children were abducted in Sunday's Mexico mass kidnap know all too well that if they do not act, no one else will and they might never see their children again.They are using the only "weapon" available to them -- a public protest.
"We want them alive. They went out to have fun; they are not criminals."
Friday, May 31, 2013
Mexico mass kidnap: 11 young people mysteriously disappear, parents protest
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