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| Friends put pictures in the bar entrance of their recently disappeared relatives in Mexico City,Thursday, May 30, 2013. Relatives who joined a march to demand solutions to the thousands of detained and disappeared in Mexico say 11 young people were kidnapped in broad daylight from a Mexico City bar last Sunday a half-block from the city's main boulevard and a few blocks from police headquarters. |
MEXICO CITY
(AP) -- Eleven young people were brazenly kidnapped in broad daylight
from an after-hours bar in Mexico City's Zona Rosa, a normally calm
district of offices, restaurants, drinking spots and dance clubs,
anguished relatives said Thursday.
The
apparent mass abduction purportedly happened sometime between 10 a.m.
and noon on Sunday
morning just off the Paseo de la Reforma, the city's
main boulevard, near the Angel of Independence monument and only about 1
1/2 blocks from the U.S. Embassy.
The
incident was the second recent high-publicity blemish for the city's
largely unregulated entertainment scene, coming 20 days after the
grandson of American civil rights activist Malcolm X was beaten to death
at another tough bar in the downtown area.
Calling
for authorities find their loved ones, family members marched Thursday
morning from the Interior Department building to the Zocalo, the city's
main square. Later they protested outside the bar, which bears
a sign
that reads Bicentenario Restaurante-Bar, and demanded to see the bar's
surveillance video.
"How could so many people
have disappeared, just like that, in broad daylight?" said Josefina
Garcia,
mother of Said Sanchez Garcia, 19, her only son. "The police say
they don't have them, so what, the earth just opened up and swallowed
them?"
She said her son wasn't involved in any criminal activity, and worked at a market stall selling beauty products.
City
prosecutors said they had received 11 missing-person reports, but
Garcia said residents of the tough
downtown neighborhood of Tepito where
the victims live thought as many as 15 or 16 people could have been
abducted.
The known missing include six men, most in their 20s, a 16-year-old boy and four young women.
While
no clear motives had been revealed in the attack, residents of Tepito
said there has been a wave of abductions of neighborhood young people in
recent months that could be related to organized crime activities.
Tepito is the center of black market activities in the city, where guns,
drugs, stolen goods and contraband are widely sold.
Mass
abductions have been rare in Mexico City, but are common in parts of
the country where drug cartels operate and are fighting with rival gangs
over territory.
Prosecutors slapped closure
stickers on the front doors of the bar Thursday, with inscriptions
saying the city's anti-kidnapping unit was investigating abductions at
the site.
Isabel Fonseca, whose brother is
among those missing, said a man who escaped told her that masked men
arrived in several white SUVs and took the group away. She said her
brother, Eulogio Fonseca, is a street vendor who sells cellphone
accessories.
"We want them alive," Fonseca said. "They went out to have fun; they are not criminals."
Mexico
City's chief prosecutor, Rodolfo Rios, said investigators had been able
to glean very little information on the disappearances.
Relatives
believe the youths were at the club, which they said is called
"Heaven," around midmorning Sunday, when waiters and bar employees
herded them out to the street and armed men bundled them into waiting
vehicles and spirited them away.
Rios said police had not located any employees of the bar and no other witnesses had presented themselves.
"We aren't sure what exactly occurred," he said. "No witness has come forward to say anything about any armed gang."
The
bar is down a side street from two high-rise office buildings that look
out on Reforma and sits across the narrow road from beauty salons and a
sushi restaurant.
Guillermo Bustamante, owner
of one the beauty parlors, said the street bustles every Saturday
morning with people coming and going from the bar.
"Every
time we arrived on Saturdays, we would see weird people coming out of
that bar," Bustamante said.
"There would be many Hummers parked outside
and men walking out with a woman on each arm."
Bars
of questionable character are often allowed to continue operating, even
though drugs may be sold inside
and the businesses frequently violate
rules governing closing times, parking and serving alcohol to minors.
Malcolm
Shabazz, grandson of the late Malcolm X, died May 9 in a fight that
erupted after he and a friend were presented with a $1,200 bill at a
seedy bar near Plaza Garibaldi, a gathering place for mariachi bands in a
rough neighborhood in the downtown area. Two waiters at the bar have
been arrested in connection with Shabazz's death.
In
June 2008, police raided another Mexico City bar to investigate drug
and alcohol sales to minors. A stampede ensued as panicked youths rushed
for the exits and police tried to stop them. A dozen young people died
in the stampede.
