MEXICO CITY — A mass escape engineered by a gang of soldiers turned drug traffickers last week was designed to free five Gulf Cartel killers, the Mexican government said.
At least 25 men dressed in uniforms made to look like those of the police overpowered guards at a prison in western Mexico on Jan. 5 and freed 25 inmates, Enrique Bautista, secretary of government for Michoacan state, told W Radio here in the national capital.
One person was confirmed killed in a shootout at the Michoacan state prison in Apatzingan, 200 miles west of Mexico City, officials said. Six of the escaped prisoners were recaptured, but some of those remaining at large “are highly dangerous,” Mr. Bautista said.
The raid apparently was aimed at freeing five killers from the Gulf Cartel, a drug-dealing group, Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said. He said a band of army deserters was linked to the attack, but that officials were not sure if they had carried out the raid themselves or trained those who did.
“Either they participated or they advised Carlos Rosales, who is the arm of the Gulf Cartel in Michoacan,” Mr. Vasconcelos said.
The gang of deserters, who call their group the Zetas, are led by former members of an elite paratroop and intelligence battalion that was posted to the border state of Tamaulipas in the 1990s to fight drug traffickers.
In October, Mr. Vasconcelos said that 31 of the estimated 350 members of the Special Air Mobile Force group posted to Tamaulipas in the 1990s deserted and joined the drug-turf war.
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