It was a messy business, clearing-up after the carload of masked gunmen who burst into the function room at a suburban hotel in the city of Torreon in northern Mexico last Saturday night and began randomly spraying bullets into a crowded dancefloor full of young men and women.
A total of 17 people were killed and dozens more injured in the apparently indiscriminate attack, which lasted two minutes and, according to witnesses, was carried out by four suspects, who fired bullets at revellers attending a birthday party organised via Facebook.
Yet when detectives began picking through the blood-stained evidence left behind after the latest atrocity in a drug-related crime wave which Mexico's government estimates has killed 25, people in the past five years, they made a discovery that turned an ordinarily grisly massacre into something astonishing. Forensic examinations of the bullet casings found on the function suite's floor revealed that they had all been fired from one of four AR assault rifles which were supposed to belong to guards at a prison in the neighbouring state of Durango.
After further investigation which saw the director of the jail in the town of Gomez Palacio and three of his officials placed under house arrest, the Attorney General announced that he had uncovered a conspiracy shocking even by the standards of a country that has grown used to shocking levels of violence and corruption.
For several months, according to detectives, guards at the prison have apparently been releasing select groups of inmates, lending them automatic weapons, and sending them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings. After carrying out the attacks, the prisoners have been driving back to jail, handing over the firearms and returning quietly to their cells. The authorities that help facilitate their murderous sprees are said to have received huge cash payments in return.
