Victims of ‘El Diablo,’ a Mexican lawman who ordered murders, seek justice

Mexico City – With his own entry, known as the Mexican lawyer El Diablo – Satan – Houses, cattle and a bus fleet purchases in the money that reduces the money bribes to collect a fortune torture, murder, kidnapping, black grabbing and other abuse.

Edgar Veytia’s transitions came from a sleepy stagnant water to one of Mexico’s most violent cartel warfare areas, while the best police of Nayarit, a small pacific coastal state.

Developing the public personality of a Crusader prosecutor full of pistols, Veytia traveled ruthlessly between Mexico and the United States, and confident that no one will see beyond the honest, guilty front.

Im I didn’t think I would be arrested, Vaz Veytia said later.

His sense of immunity was shattered on 27 March 2017, when US agents caught Veytia at a border crossing in San Diego. This was not a low -level mule that ferries to his person, but he was not a state chief prosecutor who made it easier for cartel smuggling for years. Veytia was found guilty of narcotic smuggling in January 2019.

But El Diablo knew where the bodies were buried – they spread to the US operators without getting tired. And when he testified against a greater Mexican Narco-Politica, he provided a prison card-before he finished his half 20 -year US imprisonment.

55 -year -old Veytia was released from prison in February and is currently a free man living in the United States of Northeast. But now some of the alleged victims face a single legal action.

Five Nayarit Family – Farmers, Small Business Owners and Former Police Officer – Under the Victim Protection Act, the Federal Court on the Washington DC filed a lawsuit. The adopted law, which was adopted in 1992, moves in official capacities for foreign governments, while allowing civil claims against the abusers engaged in persecution anywhere in the world.

Nayarit plaintiffs, El Diablo’s reign of terrorism, torture, death threats and gsp, he says. Although they have paid their Veyta dues in accordance with the US law, they say that mostly in Mexico, some of the anonymous victims have been massacred or lost for a long time, and that they deserve a calculation.

“When institutions mean protection and preservation of justice, when the plaintiffs become the perpetrators of torture and abuse, the plaintiffs leave without recourse.” He said. “In the face of this abandonment, as civil society – we came together to resist silence and impunity.”

It is San Francisco -based Guernica37, a non -profit organization that represents nayarit residents looking for non -specified damages, seeking accountability for violations of global rights. The assistant is the Civil Rights Case, which was established by Paul L. Hoffman, a joint and pioneer in such international actions.

Veytia rejects residents’ accusations. New York-based lawyer Alexei Schacht labels “Shake-Down Artists” and “Frauds” looking for a big salary day.

“Mr. Veytia committed terrible crimes, but paid money in a maximum security prison and trying to reversed his life, S said Schacht. “It’s unfortunate for these people to lie about him.”

Regardless of the truth, Veytia’s history of disgusting crimes dramatics the stubborn connection between Mexican official and the ruthless mafia of the country. For decades, Cartel cash charm has held the prosecutors, generals, mayors, governors, governors and even the country’s highest -level law enforcement Honcho, Genaro García Luna, who testified in the federal court in Brooklyn.

The observers say that many corrupt officials and Kartel Capos are ultimately in Mexico – not in Mexico – not in Mexico.

“There is another official example of impunity in Mexico, Guillermo Garduño, researcher Guillermo Garduño at Autonomic Metropol University in Mexico City. “Organized crime and many politicians in this country are one and the same. The Veytia case is a very clear example of this, but far from a single person.”

The state-sized Nayarit province, the Massachusetts, has a mountainous interior in which the 1.2 million population has a living for some peasants for a long time for some peasants.

Nayarit, a sandwich among the drug trafficking centers of Sinaloa and Jalisco states, made the award -winning grass as the organized crime trade unions expanded their land and embrace the new rackets. Violence increased rapidly in Nayarit and elsewhere in Mexico, with the US support of President Felipe Calderón, after declaring “war ında about drug cartels in 2006.

Weapons wars and gang murders shook TEPIC, the cheek capital of Nayarit’s volcanoes, where the murder rate is a rival to the hyper violent border cities of Mexico.

“There were people hanging from the bridges, Vaz Veytia expressed Tepic in those days when he was asked to identify. “There were people who had boredom.”

And he added, especially a frightening application, a warning that awakens, he added. poseSignature Mexico Egyptian and Meat Casserole.

Veytia, “legs, heads such as heads such as these big cans were these big cans,” he said. “And they will add some corn beef and pose. ”

According to a VEYTI-MIDDLE US-EKSICE CITIZEN-refuge, who continued primary school in San Diego, he arrived in TEPIC in the early 1990s, running a transportation company and a jewelery shop. He then says he has gained a degree of law.

Veytia tied his reserve to the spur of the charismatic Roberto Sandoval, a happy poy on a cowboy hat elected by the Mayor of Tepic and elected Governor of Nayarit in 2011. According to the prosecutors, Sandoval called Veytia as the law enforcement officers both in the capital and the state. (Sandoval is imprisoned in Mexico for charges of corruption he rejected.).

Veytia, a lush mustache Portly figure, looked like an unexpected Eliot NESS, but was credited with reducing violence and was praised as the horror of every criminal ” corridoror honey.

In fact, human rights activists say that Veytia is preparing a kind Paz NarcaOr Narco-Peace: Corruption police legions did not deal with the mafia preferred by Veyta. This guaranteed the dominance of a gang. In -card war fell, but drug trafficking exploded.

From the moment he was arrested, Veytia tried to do good by giving information about Narcos, and in 2019, former President Calderón, Mexico’s security chief García Luna took a great break with the arrest in Texas. García Luna was a big fish ready to be fried in Brooklyn.

However, during his statement, Veyti told his own crimes. During the nine -year law enforcement career, Veytia, about $ 1 million backfire– With gifts, including Rolex watches, from traders – El Diablo – Veytia confessed that 10 “or more” people were “responsible for their murders and dozens of other torture of other people who use various methods – sometimes electric shocks, sometimes water board.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón is standing next to Mexico’s Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna during the meeting of the National Security Council in Mexico City in 2008, and Congress leader Cesar Duarte.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

While he was witnessing García Luna, Veytia left a bomb: an old governor of Nayarit (not Sandoval) said that he had come to protect the legendary syncopy boss Joaquín from the President Calderón and García Luna to protect Guzmán.

Calderón, who was never accused in the case, condemned Veytia’s statement as a “absolute lie”.

However, in 2023, a jury condemned García Luna to millions of dollars in the bribe from the Sinaloa cartel. Wasm was sentenced to 38 years in prison.

A judge reduced Veytia’s sentence to 20 to 10 years. When Veytia left prison in February, he served a little less than eight years.

According to his lawyer, Veytia lost most of his accumulated health in Mexico, where prosecutors were looking for the extradition of kidnapping, torture and other accusations..

Past crimes have proved that their ghosts were permanent. In the civilian case, the inhabitants of Nayarit, Veytia, tortured them, threatened to kill them, and a state -wide “culture of horror” inflammation of the systematic property theft, he says.

The plaintiffs include Gerardo Montoya and his wife Yadiria Yesenia zavala.

In June 2016, the couple claimed in the court newspapers, the cops took them to a road, handcuffed them, and pushed them to see “Patron Veytia in a police station in Tepic. According to Montoya, Veytia threatened to kill him unless the couple had a property. Montoa said that he was beaten so badly that a medical officer was called to control him. His wife says he was sexually harassed and he was forced to go home and get the title deed. The couple says Veytia forced them to sign the property.

Before being released, Montoya, Veytia warned him: “If you say something, you’re a dead man.”

Yuri Disraili Camacho Vega, a former Nayarit state police officer, said he resigned from the power that feared his life. Camacho, Federal officials, who condemned the protection of a famous crime family to protect the members of the Federal officials after filed a criminal complaint with the federal officials, he said he received death threats.

After returning to Nayarit more than a year to visit his mother after a year, Camacho was arrested, accused of riding a stolen vehicle, tortured and thrown into jail.

According to Camacho, Veytia asked Camacho to withdraw his claims against him – and more than 1 million pesos, then equivalent of about $ 77,000. Camacho said he was seriously beaten and was exposed to water board or simulated to drown.

If he didn’t accept Veytia’s conditions, Camacho said he was told, and he said that he and his loved ones would be killed. Camacho said his family had paid and withdrew the complaint.

In court newspapers, Veytia rejects everything. He accused Montoya for a long time being a drug smugglers ve and called Camacho as a osicated officer who worked on Sinaloa cartel and tried to kill Veytia.

Veytia’s lawyer Schacht said that allegations challenge reliability. Reminding how Veytia uses power during the Narco days, Schacht said, “If my client wants to torture you, you will die.”

Special reporters Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto Del Río contributed to this report.