Vigilante Leader Says Elite Mexico Police Unit Not Involved in Deadly Clash Agencia EFE
go to original December 19, 2014

Hipolito Mora, founder of one of the first self-defense groups in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan, holds up a rosary Wednesday in the town of La Ruana, where a clash the day before between his group and another headed by a rival vigilante leader left 11 dead. (EFE)

MEXICO CITY .- The founder of one of the first self-defense groups in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan denied Thursday that the Federal Police's elite Gendarmerie division was involved in this week's armed clash between rival vigilante forces that left 11 dead.

"The Gendarmerie held their position well, and even moved back from where we were," Hipolito Mora told Radio Formula in regard to the shootout in the Tierra Caliente region, which straddles the states of Michoacan, Guerrero and Mexico.

Remarks by rival Luis Antonio Torres, who accused the Gendarmerie of conspiring with Mora's group during Tuesday's clash, are false, the vigilante leader said.

Torres told reporters Wednesday that the Gendarmerie had made a "pact" with Mora's group and that his men had no idea they would come under fire while traveling through La Ruana, the town in Michoacan where the clash occurred.

The Gendarmerie, formally commissioned in August, was created to to provide security in rural and marginalized areas "where there is greater institutional weakness."

Read the rest at La Prensa

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