Mexico rejects abuse claims in deadly gunfight

Mexican authorities rejected suggestions Monday that police executed criminals in a gunfight that killed 42 suspects and one officer after the one-sided death toll raised doubts among security experts. Senior officials said the suspects refused to surrender, firing at the officers and a Blackhawk helicopter during Friday's three-hour battle on a ranch in the western state of Michoacan, near the border with Jalisco. "There was not one single execution," federal police chief Enrique Galindo told Radio Formula, denying that officers wanted to avenge the killings of several comrades by the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel this year. Galindo said superior training and equipment, including armored vehicles and the helicopter, explains the lopsided result. "If the helicopter hadn't arrive, maybe the number of deaths would have been different," he said. National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said the aircraft did not aim directly at the suspects, firing only to contain them. The Blackhawk was hit by three bullets, he said. Only three suspects surrendered, including two who had been hiding under mattresses inside the main house, Rubido told reporters. All but one admitted to working for the New Generation cartel, the latest top target of President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration. The gang has killed at least 28 police and troops since March. On May 1, the cartel downed a military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. - Why only three surrendered? - Relatives of the 42 dead suspects said many were farmers from Jalisco who went to Michoacan to to find work, but some acknowledged they did not know what they were doing there. Families buried some of them in Ocotlan, Jalisco, where relatives said the men appeared to have been beaten and had their teeth knocked out. "He didn't deserve to be killed this way," shouted a man accompanying his 26-year-old cousin's coffin. "He was hit and burned. He had bullet wounds in the legs. He couldn't defend himself." Experts said the death toll had echoes of a June 2014 incident, when the army initially said troops had killed 22 gang suspects in a shootout, while only one soldier was wounded. Prosecutors later charged three soldiers with murdering eight suspects. Rights officials say at least 12 people were executed after surrendering in the central Mexico town of Tlatlaya. One expert, former intelligence agency official Alejandro Hope, said he still had reservations about last week's firefight despite the government's explanations. "They said the same things after Tlatlaya," he told AFP. "Let's suppose there were no executions, why not investigate where there was a proportionate and rational use of force?". He added: "Why did only three out of 45 surrender? Why did the shootout continue longer after the helicopter arrived? Why are there no wounded (suspects)?" - All suspects fired guns - Rubido said a convoy of around 40 officers headed to the El Sol ranch after the owner reported that armed men seized the property. Another 60 military and police reinforcements arrived later. An unknown number of suspects may have fled during the shootout, he said. All 42 suspects tested positive for gunshot residue, meaning they all fired a weapon. "It was a situation where the criminal group took the decision to confront the police," Rubido said, adding that they may not have surrendered out of fear cartel bosses would punish them and their families. "There was no other alternative than to repel the aggression in the same manner that they initiated it," he said. "They would shoot, run, hide." Another 73 ballistics tests showed that all the shots were taken from a long distance, Rubido said, implying there were no point-blank range gunshots. Experts had noted on Friday that the suspects outnumbered the weapons seized, but Rubido said the updated figure for captured guns now totaled 45.