Weapons of criminal gangs in Mexico - confiscated by the military (archive image)
Photo: Jorge Duenes / REUTERS
The Mexican government has sued several arms manufacturers and dealers in the United States over the use of smuggled arms from the United States by criminal groups in Mexico.
She filed a civil lawsuit in a US federal court in the city of Boston on Wednesday, Mexico's Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said at a press conference.
Among the eleven companies named are manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson and the Austrian company Glock.
Mexico suffered considerable damage, according to a document from the Mexican Foreign Ministry that the Reuters news agency was able to see. According to the report, the arms manufacturers were aware that their business methods had led to illegal arms smuggling into Mexico. The resulting damage is estimated at ten billion dollars.
According to a report by the Mexican Ministry of Defense, more than two million firearms were smuggled into Mexico between 2009 and 2019, mostly from the neighboring country.
There these mostly end up in the hands of criminal groups.
In Mexico, where around 126 million people live, an average of almost 100 murders a day are registered according to the latest figures - in Germany there were 245 in the entire past year. In addition, more than 90,000 people are considered to have disappeared in the North American country.
Violence in Mexico has exploded since the state began militarily fighting the so-called drug war in late 2006.
Today there are numerous powerful drug cartels and other criminal groups, often linked to corrupt politicians and security forces.
Most of the crimes are never resolved.
The manufacturers' argument that they weren't responsible for whose hands their guns got into is wrong, Ebrard said.
"They even develop models that are aesthetically designed specifically for drug traffickers."
ime / dpa / Reuters
