Mexican drug cartel turns in own men for US kidnapping killings

• The Scorpions Group has apologized for kidnapping four US citizens.
• The Scorpions Group allegedly left a letter with the men.
• Mexican authorities handed over the bodies of the two deceased men to US.

According to reports from the Mexican border city of Matamoros, the Scorpions Group, a splinter group of the Gulf Cartel, has apologized for kidnapping four US citizens last week, killing two of them, and has turned over the men it believes are responsible.

Many Mexican newspapers published a photograph on their front pages that appears to show five men lying face down on the ground, their hands tied and their T-shirts pulled up above their heads. It was apparently taken just as police arrived.

The Scorpions Group allegedly left a letter with the men in which it apologized to the people of Matamoros, the US victims and their families, and a Mexican woman killed last week when the gang opened fire on a white minivan carrying Americans.

According to the reports, a copy of the letter was obtained from a law enforcement official in the state of Tamaulipas.

“We have decided to turn over those who were directly involved and responsible for the events”, the letter reads, saying the five had “acted under their own decision-making and lack of discipline”. The letter also accuses the men of breaking the cartel’s rules over “protecting the lives of the innocent”.

Meanwhile, police have cordoned off a health clinic in Matamoros where cartel members allegedly took injured US citizens for treatment. According to reports, the gang took the four Americans there, but the two with the most serious injuries, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, died soon after.

According to reports, Mexican authorities handed over the bodies of the two deceased men to US officials in Matamoros on Thursday afternoon, and their remains were repatriated.

The latest developments come as some in Mexico have questioned the initial version of events. The group was said to have travelled to Matamoros so that one of them, Latavia McGee, could undergo a cosmetic medical procedure at the city’s clinic. She was said to have been accompanied to the appointment by three friends.

According to Reports, three of the four Americans were convicted of minor drug-related offences, but one was charged with manufacturing prohibited narcotics with the intent to distribute.

According to Reports, the Mexican authorities are looking into the possibility that the four Americans were kidnapped because they were mistaken for rival cartel members encroaching on their territory.

The inquiry into the Americans’ background comes as the political temperature surrounding the Matamoros incident continues to rise. Several Republican politicians in the United States, including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, have called for the use of US military force against Mexico’s drug cartels.

Specifically, he’s proposing a plan to designate Mexican drug cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organisations” in order to, as he put it, “unleash the fury and might of the United States against (them)”.

That rhetoric prompted a furious response in Mexico from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who said “Mexico was not a protectorate or a colony of the United States”. Senator Graham’s proposal for military intervention was described as “unacceptable” by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.

In the midst of the tense relations, US Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall is in Mexico for a meeting with President Lopez Obrador to discuss the US’s worsening fentanyl and synthetic opioid crisis.

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