Kidnapped, murdered and dissolved in acid
The three film students kidnapped in Jalisco a month ago were killed and dissolved in sulfuric acid by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, as reported by the Prosecutor's Office. Some genetic remains of the students of the University of Audiovisual Media have been found in recent weeks on a farm where they were transferred after their abduction on March 19 by an armed group in Tonalá, a town adjacent to the city of Guadalajara.
Salomón Aceves Gastélum, 25 years old and originally from Mexicali (Baja California); Jesús Daniel Díaz, 20 years old and from Los Cabos (Baja California Sur), and Marco Ávalos, 20 years old and from Tepic (Nayarit) join the overflowing list of 104,000 homicides that have occurred since the government of Enrique Peña Nieto began, and to the more than 200,000 murders related to the war against drug trafficking, which has lasted 11 years.
The three students were murdered in the style of Mexican narco: with excessive violence and trying to erase any evidence with a corrosive chemical. Neither Gastélum, nor Díaz, nor Ávalos knew why on the night of March 19 a group disguised as agents of the Prosecutor's Office intercepted them on a highway when they stopped their car to fix a mechanical failure. The three students returned with three companions over a long day of filming for a school work, which had been carried out in a cabin in Tonalá.
In the loneliness of the highway, six men with high-powered weapons got out of two vans and ordered the three students to board one of the vehicles directly. They released a shot into the air before starting quickly, leaving no trace.
The Office of the Attorney General of Jalisco has confirmed that the young people did not have the most remote link with the drug traffickers of the region and that they were only at the wrong place and time. "It is not proven that they have any link with any criminal cartel," said Ivette Torres, head of the investigation to the Mexican press. The only mistake of the aspiring filmmakers was to mount the school shoot for two days on a property that at one time was a safe house for a criminal group.
The aunt of one of them - the authorities have not revealed their identity - lent them the cabin for their project. While they worked, at least eight members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel watched over them without their knowledge. After the kidnapping, the three students were taken to a house where they were tortured, interrogated and killed. There, the Prosecutor's Office has found traces of the blood of Jesús Daniel Díaz that reflect the terror that the young people suffered in their last hours of life.
Their bodies, always according to the version of the Prosecutor's Office, were taken to another house where the criminals submerged them in sulfuric acid, commonly used in fertilizers, to dissolve any evidence. This would seem the script of a horror movie, but it is far from that.
The narcotics traffickers of the Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartel would have confused the students with members of the rival Cartel Nueva Plaza, upon seeing them occupy the house that once served as an armament and drug store. Two of the eight men who participated in the kidnapping and murder of the young have confirmed the story about the murder of the students and that among their peers on the cartel there was a belief that the victims were criminals like them.
