Mexican officials have issued a rare apology to the families of five youths who were killed in 2016 in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Corrupt local police officers colluding with the notorious Jalisco New Generation drug cartel (CJNG) seized the five in the mistaken belief they were members of a rival gang.
They handed them over to the CJNG which killed them and burned their bodies.
More than 5,000 people have disappeared in Veracruz over the past decade.
When the state’s new governor, Cuitláhuac García, was sworn in on 1 December, he launched an emergency plan to drive down the number of disappeared and requested help from international organisations to find those missing.
On Monday, Governor García apologised to the relatives of the five murdered youths, four men aged between 24 and 27 and a 16-year-old girl, saying that “the collusion between police and organised crime wasn’t stopped in time”.
Mexico’s deputy interior minister for human rights, Alejandro Encinas, said Mexico had a “profound responsibility” for what had happened.
We know that organised crime works with government officials at all levels,” Mr Encinas said at an event attended by the youths’ families at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico City.
Mr Encinas said that while public apologies were not enough, they were “a first step” towards justice.
However, the father of one of the five youths said: “I do not believe in the Mexican state’s justice”. He demanded that those responsible for his son’s murder be sentenced.
