Mexican Military Executed at Least 12, Federal Panel Says

By DAMIEN CAVE

MEXICO CITY — The federal Human Rights Commission reported on Tuesday that Mexican soldiers had executed at least 12 people, and probably 15, in late June after a supposed shootout with gang suspects, contradicting official military accounts.

The commission’s president, Raúl Plascencia, said the scene of the killings in the small town of Tlatlaya, where 22 people were reported to have died on June 30, had been altered. Bodies had been moved at the rural warehouse, he said, to suggest that everyone was killed in a shootout — the initial explanation from the Defense Department. In fact, the commission found, most of the people had surrendered before they were shot and killed.

“This is one of the worst incidents of human rights abuses ever committed,” Mr. Plascencia said.

The 93-page report, based on forensic evidence and interviews with witnesses, amounts to a bold rebuke for Mexico’s powerful military, which has become increasingly involved in fighting organized crime with aggressive tactics and little accountability.

The commission’s findings included several grisly details previously unknown or kept secret. Mr. Plascencia said one victim’s head had been twisted until his neck broke. Four other bodies showed signs of having been beaten with blunt objects before death. Bullet marks and other evidence on the warehouse’s walls suggested that seven more victims had been lined up and shot “when they were disarmed and not resisting,” Mr. Plascencia said.

He also emphasized Tuesday at a news conference here that three of the victims were adolescents, and he criticized what he said was a cover-up that ran from the soldiers all the way to senior civilian officials.

Specifically, he criticized the attorney general’s office in Mexico State, where Tlatlaya is, for delaying any independent inquiry by initially blocking the delivery of photographs from the scene, presumably showing evidence that ran counter to the official story.

Human rights advocates welcomed the analysis. They also sought to put more pressure on President Enrique Peña Nieto to investigate both what happened and the false accounts.

“This is a huge blow to Peña Nieto’s credibility on human rights — not just the barbarity of the crime, but the fact that it was covered up for this long,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch.

The report confirms accounts provided anonymously to reporters by witnesses, and evidence uncovered by The Associated Press, that first suggested executions.

Since then, eight soldiers have been detained and brought up on military charges. Three soldiers have been charged with murder in civilian courts.

The report ended with recommendations, including demands for an exhaustive investigation of the episode and the cover-up, and more collaboration among state and federal authorities. The demands are not binding, but if the government does not comply, it must publicly explain its reasons.