
Originally Posted by
TheSnail
^^^^If you want to get technical...
"The men appeared terrified, often looking off camera at their captors. At the end of the video pistol appears and one hit man is shot in the head....law enforcement officials in the United States and Mexico have been aware of the video for months, but only after it became public this week did Mexican authorities arrest eleven federal agents on charges of murder and kidnapping"
Story from Dallasnews.com (registration required so I've posted it below)
They're the latest weapon in the drug war: videotaped executions. Like tapes of beheadings made by terrorists, these videos can show in graphic detail the consequences of crossing the drug cartels.
"This is what you do in wars," said an investigator familiar with the video.
Those who put it together and distributed it, the investigator said, clearly wanted to unnerve the Zetas, whose men are being interrogated on camera.
"It's a way of making them paranoid," he said. "They're mind games, and it usually works."
But Bruce Bagley, a professor of international studies at the University of Miami and an expert on drug-trafficking issues, said that in his experience of studying the drug world, "taping crimes is extremely rare."
"This is the first time I have heard of something like this," said Mr. Bagley, who has served as a consultant to both the Colombian and Mexican governments. "Quite frankly, it's remarkable."
Mr. Bagley, who has not seen the video, said the motivation for recording such a crime could be "part of the ongoing feud between the cartels, a way to bloody the waters even more and give credibility to false rumors."
"The video, as you describe, sounds like an indictment against the Zetas," he said. "Clearly someone is using this to gain some advantage. What that is, I don't know. But it's fascinating to see how this video is now influencing this drug war."
Text transcript
Here are excerpts from an English translation of the video, which lasts about seven minutes. The numbers correspond to the four men in the video (from left):
Voice: What did you come to do in Nuevo Laredo?
Captive 1: "Well, I was sent by Zeta 14 Lazcano because I have some contacts with the army, to see about the lookouts and to monitor the movements of the army, as ... Lazcano and Goyo are angry with the attorney general because when the operation was done against Fat Man Mata they were not alerted and they're thinking about breaking him because they are given a fee, see? And they didn't comply with that."
Voice: What is the "cookout"?
Captive 2: "The cookout is when they grab somebody, extract information from him or drugs or money, something like that, they take away from him whatever they wanted, whatever he carried that was an offense and ... after having him tortured he is executed or sent to a ranch or to those places, and there they give him the last shot and they throw him into a barrel and burn him with different fuels.
DallasNews.com/extra
Exclusive: Video offers brutal glimpse of cartel
Taped killing a 'way to bloody waters'
Transcript of interrogation
Excerpts of interrogation
Captive 3: I was contracted ... for Nuevo Laredo to pick up people and to kill people because the place belongs to the Zetas.
Captive 4: "I am a recruiter for the Zetas. There are three points of recruitment, which are Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey. There are four more trainings that are done in the different bases; they are in Laredo, Monterrey, Ciudad Mier, Miguel Alemán. Also, people are recruited even if they are not... are not GAFE, defectors. They get hold of people from different places. ...
Voice to No. 4: And you, [expletive]?
Captive 4 is shot in the head.