Guards may have aided mass prison breakout

JAILED members of the Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death and then staged a mass escape, apparently with the help of prison authorities, officials in northern Mexico have said.

Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, yesterday said the prison’s director and three other officials have been fired and are under investigation for allegedly helping in the escape.

“Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police,” Mr Medina told a news conference.

Mr Medina confirmed that all 30 escaped inmates were linked to the Zetas cartel, a brutal gang founded by deserters from an elite Mexican military unit.

He said no members of any gang had broken into the prison on Sunday to free their colleagues, as has happened at other Mexican prisons. Nor were any firearms smuggled into the facility; all of the deaths apparently occurred with blunt instruments or improvised knives.

Mr Medina did not say whether the riot and murders were carried out to cover up the prison break, but said the mass escape appeared to have been planned, and may have involved help from authorities at a specific point along the prison perimeter, known as Tower Six.

The two cartels were allies before splitting in 2010; they have since been fighting turf battles in north-east Mexico.

Prison guards in Mexico are vulnerable to corruption – they are poorly paid and often vulnerable to threats because they live in the same poor areas where the cartels operate.

The prison is located in Apodaca, a part of the Monterrey metropolitan area that has long been the country’s symbol of development and prosperity.