Mexico's gang wars spawn vigilante justice

The bodies of four alleged gangsters, stuffed into a parked car near President Felipe Calderon's compound in this capital city, carried a message of divine retribution: “The wicked are denied their light, and the upraised arm is broken,” proclaimed the biblical passage, Job 38:15. Scrawled with a marker on the backs of three of the bodies, a single word — “Kidnapper.” The discovery of the dead men two weeks ago suggests to many Mexicans that despairing private citizens or even local officials may be exacting their own raw justice amid the unbridled crime sweeping the country. Last Tuesday, thousands of people in a village near Mexico City threatened to lynch four alleged kidnappers. The men, two of whom authorities say may be federal policemen, were rescued by state police who rushed to the town of Juchitepec. Earlier this month, human rights activists in Sinaloa state, cradle of most of Mexico's narcotics smuggling syndicates, claimed that death squads, possibly composed of police officers, might be behind a string of recent killings targeting suspected car thieves. And, following the July murders of two American church leaders who had challenged a local kidnapping, a fundamentalist Mormon farm community southwest of Ciudad Juarez requested and temporarily received permission to form a militia. A group dubbed the “Citizens' Command” early this year announced it would begin killing gangsters in bloody Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso. Several subsequent killings suggested that the victims were targeted by such a group...read more