Another 16 people from the group of 66 kidnapped on Friday in Culiacán, Sinaloa, have returned to their homes. Among those newly released, who join the 42 on Saturday, there are four children. Federal and state forces are still searching for eight other victims.
“There are 16 more people who have returned to their homes. “We are working to be able to locate or determine what is happening with those eight people who are pending,” said the Secretary of Public Security of the State, Gerardo Mérida Sánchez. The official did not clarify if it was a rescue or simply the kidnapped people returned to their homes after being freed by the armed groups. Mérida Sánchez spoke, in any case, of “absent”, because “so far no complaint has been filed in this regard.” “No one wanted to report it. We believe that at some point someone will have to do it,” he explained.
Continuing with the information regarding people deprived of liberty in Culiacán, I would like to inform you:
At this time, 58 people have already been located (36 adults, 22 girls and boys) of the 66 absent, leaving 8 people still classified as missing due to…
— Rubén Rocha Moya (@rochamoya_) March 24, 2024
The lack of details began on Friday, when the authorities first spoke of 15 kidnappings and then of 25. On Saturday, the number had already risen to 66. Among the victims there are men, women and children who are members of complete families. The kidnappings occurred in subdivisions, neighborhoods and rural communities. The authorities added complaints one after another, without being able to establish the exact number of victims. The Governor of the State, Rubén Rocha Moya, initially minimized the situation. “These are things that happen,” he said, and spoke of 15 kidnapped people. The figure later added another ten and now easily exceeds fifty.
The kidnappings occurred in various parts of Culiacán and in towns near the urban center of the capital, such as La Noria, El Palmito, Villa Bonita or Lomas de Magisterio, as explained by deputy prosecutor Dámasco Castro Saavedra to the Noroeste newspaper. The national government sent federal forces to assist in the search for the missing.
The mass kidnapping immediately entered the presidential election campaign. Xóchitl Gálvez, presidential candidate for the Fuerza y Corazón por México coalition, criticized that Governor Rocha Moya had, as she said, “minimized” the impact of the kidnapping. “It worries me because children and women are still missing and the most worrying thing is the normality with which the governor says 'these are things that happen.' I don't think these are things that happen, they try to normalize violence, that we see it as normal for seven families to rise up with their wives and children,” Gálvez said this Saturday during a campaign tour in Oaxaca.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the ruling party's candidate, visited Coahuila as part of her campaign tour. The kidnappings, he said, “are cases that we obviously regret,” but asked to compare the figures with those of 2018. “I do not fully agree that there are more and more cases of these or there were more in 2018. You know that all the indices Crimes at the national level are decreasing, that does not mean that there continue to be insecurity problems in the country, and we have to accelerate it,” he said in a press conference.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to whatsapp channel and receive all the key information on current events in this country.
#kidnapped #Sinaloa #released