Mexican police accused of cover-up after killing 22 cartel suspects

Mexico’s federal police killed 22 people on a ranch in the western state of Michoacán last year then moved the bodies and planted guns to corroborate the official account that the deaths happened in a gun battle, the country’s human rights commission has alleged.

One police officer was killed in the confrontation on 22 May 2015. The government has said the dead were drug cartel suspects who were hiding out on the ranch in Tanhuato, near the border with Jalisco state.

The National Human Rights Commission alleged there were also two cases of torture and four more deaths caused by excessive force. It said it could not establish satisfactorily the circumstances of 15 others who were shot dead.

“The investigation confirmed facts that show grave human rights violations attributable to public servants of the federal police,” said the commission president, Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez.

Mexico’s national security commissioner, Renato Sales, who oversees the federal police, denied the accusations, holding his own news conference before the rights commission had finished its own.

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