Five young Mexican men who were murdered by a drug cartel were lured to meet gang members on the understanding that they were being offered jobs, before they were ordered to join the criminal organisation, it has been claimed.
The boyhood friends, who were all aged between 19 and 22, were last seen on August 11 in the town of Lagos de Moreno in central Mexico.
Eyewitnesses told local reporter Hector De Mauleon that 10 armed men grabbed them from their car in San Miguel, forced them onto a white pickup truck and a van with blacked-out windows.
A sickening video has seen circulated on social media, in which the five men were kneeling with their mouths strapped shut with duct tape. Their faces were bruised and bleeding.
The men were forced to lie down, and one of them was made to beat, stab and then decapitate his helpless friend.
The Attorney General’s Office found the property where the grim video was allegedly taken in a neighbourhood called La Orilla del Agua.
In the following hours, the authorities uncovered a farm with the burnt remains of four people. They are looking into whether the remains are of four of the five youngsters.
A fifth body was located in the boot of a torched Volkswagen Jetta, discovered still on fire early on Monday morning on a highway between Lagos de Moreno and Encarnacion Diaz.
The five victims were Roberto Olmeda, 20; Diego Lara, 20; Uriel Galván, 19; Dante Cedillo, 22; and Jaime Martínez, 21.
It has emerged that Dante Cedillo was an up-and-coming professional cyclist that had two national olympic gold medals to his name.
The five may have been attracted to a meeting with the cartel kingpins by the promise of work.
At least two of the five had made contact with someone they knew who had a contact at a call centre that was looking to hire part-time security staff.
According to the El Universal newspaper, federal sources told the publication that the five victims had arranged to meet the call centre contact during the annual celebrations to honour the patron saint – the Feria of Lagod de Moreno.
As the partying began to quieten down, one of the five texted a relative at 10.55pm to say they were on the way home.
However, El Universal sources said that one of the people they had arranged to meet was an established member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is exceptionally powerful in the state.
The CJNG runs a number of call centres, according to the publication’s federal sources, and uses them to force new employees to join the cartel.
The call centres are believed to post fake job listings, with a view to attracting applicants that are then given no choice but to join the ranks of the criminal enterprise.
Security analyst David Saucedo Torres, told El Universal that the CNJG has established a network of these call centres.
“In the last two years or so in various regions surrounding Lagos de Moreno a series of training and recruitment centres have emerged. They have made Lagos de Moreno a key operational site, specifically for recruiting and training squads of hitmen.”
Saucedo Torres said he believed the five were swept up in the cartel’s recruitment drive.
“The five young people who were kidnapped seem by all indications to have been caught in some sort of training program by the Jalisco Cartel, which sets tests for the new recruits – forcing them to carry out assassinations.”
