Mexico City’s police operations chief was killed in the capital on Sunday, just three days after an indigenous rights activist and his family were killed in the country, authorities said – the latest in a series of attacks targeting policeactivists and The politicians across Mexico.
“As a result of a cowardly attack in Coacalco, Mexico State, my colleague and friend Chief Commissioner Milton Morales Figueroa lost his life,” local security secretary Pablo Vazquez said on social media, pledging to “identify, arrest and bring those responsible to justice.”
The officer, who was in charge of intelligence operations combating organised crime, was outside a poultry shop when he was stopped by a man who shot him, according to security camera footage.
“Milton was tasked with important investigative tasks to protect the peace and security of the people of Mexico City,” Mayor Marti Batres wrote on social media.
Mayor Marti Batres
Small drug trafficking and smuggling cells operating in the megacity are linked to some of the country’s powerful drug cartels, such as the powerful Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG).
The Jalisco cartel is best known for producing millions of doses of deadly fentanyl and smuggling them into the United States as Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone. These pills cause about 70,000 deaths from overdose per year in the United States.
Local media reported that Figueroa’s work helped dismantle some gangs.
While several police chiefs have been targeted in other Mexican states plagued by criminal violence in recent years, attacks on authorities in the capital have been rare.
Activist, his wife and daughter murdered
A Mexican indigenous rights activist was killed along with his wife and daughter when unknown assailants riddled their car with bullets and set it on fire, the prosecutor’s office said Friday.
Lorenzo Santos Torres, 53, and his family were traveling in a van on a highway in the southern state of Oaxaca when they were stopped and shot dead on Thursday.
The attackers then set fire to the vehicle with the passengers inside, the prosecutor’s office said.
“We condemn the violence with which the crime was committed,” state prosecutor Bernardo Rodriguez Alamilla told reporters, suggesting the attack may have been motivated by “revenge.”
Santos Torres was an active human rights activist in Oaxaca.
According to the local Centre for Human Rights and Advice to Indigenous Peoples (Cedhapi), the activist had received threats because of his work defending the political, social and land rights of indigenous communities.
“Lorenzo Santos Torres spoke out against the injustices committed by the municipal authorities of Santiago Amoltepec,” Cedhapi said, demanding that the assassins be punished.
Several human rights activists have been assassinated in recent years in Mexico, a country long plagued by violence linked to drug trafficking and ancestral conflicts over agricultural land.
The country of 126 million has seen more than 450,000 people murdered since the then government of Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
