Prisoners 'freed and armed by guards for drug murders'

GUARDS and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and sent them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorisation of the prison director to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Mr Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Similar ballistics tests linked the guns to earlier killings at two bars in Torreon, the capital of northern Coahuila state, he said. At least 16 people were killed in those attacks.

Mr Najera blamed the killings on disputes between rival drug cartels. "Unfortunately, the criminals also carried out cowardly killings of innocent civilians, only to return to their cells," he said.

Coahuila and neighbouring Durango are among several northern states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Mexico has long had a problem with investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Reports estimate less than two per cent of crimes in Mexico result in prison sentences. But this latest development suggests that even putting cartel gunmen in prison may not prevent them from continuing to commit crimes.

Interior secretary Francisco Blake said the revelation "can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions. We cannot allow this to happen again."

Mexican federal police have also announced the arrest of an alleged leading member of a drug gang blamed in recent killings and a car-bombing in the violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Police described Luis Vazquez Barragan, 39, as a top member of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, saying he received orders directly from cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Vazquez Barragan allegedly organized payments, moved drugs and oversaw a system of safe houses in and around Ciudad Juarez.

La Linea has been blamed for a car bomb that killed three people July 15 in Ciudad Juarez and for two separate shootings March 13 that killed a US consular employee and two other people connected to the consulate.

Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a pound of cocaine and two guns.