This bricklayer confessed to having dissolved hundreds of corpses in acid. Now you can go free

Santiago Meza López, known as

, who confessed in 2009 to having dissolved the remains of 300 people in acid when he worked for drug traffickers in Tijuana, could be released this year, according to Fernando Ocegueda, president of the United Association for the Disappeared of Baja California, in an interview with a local news outlet.

"It is very sad news for many families who feel a certain anger towards him, for the work he did, but it is the law and it has to be followed, even if we don't like it," Ocegueda said.

Santiago Meza, right, in Tijuana in January 2009. Guillermo Arias / ASSOCIATED PRESS

His son, Fernando Ocegueda Ruelas, a 23-year-old engineering student, disappeared in Tijuana after being kidnapped by a group of hit men.

Since then his father is one of the activists who fight for justice for the disappeared.

El Pozolero

for the crimes of organized crime, clandestine burial and criminal association.

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In his confession, after being captured in 2009 in Tijuana, he explained that he received 600 dollars a week to dispose of corpses on the orders of Teodoro García Simental, known as

or

, who at that time was in a war with the Arellano Felix poster.

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This struggle caused the disappearance of hundreds of people and the murder of more than 3,000.

El Pozolero

, who also worked as a bricklayer, defended in his statements that he received the corpses and that he did not kill anyone.

He dedicated himself to this macabre work since 1984.

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He used caustic soda and boiling water as a method to disappear the bodies;

some remains were found in mass graves in Tijuana in the sectors known as Loma Bonita, La Gallera and El Ojo de Agua.

"If we make a count from 1984 to 2009, it was many years. The first bodies that were disposed of were emptied before the channeling through the river was made. I calculate that there were at least 1,000 or 2,000 bodies that could have been disposed of. We do not have the evidence, but it was many years and if he was already doing this activity, they logically give us those numbers," said the activist.

The organizations for the disappeared want the penalty for the crime of clandestine burial to be reformed so that it is a serious crime and requires preventive detention in Baja California.

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"Unfortunately we have not been able to advance with the law of forced disappearance because it is detained in Congress, and we have not been able to advance with the law of burial and exhumation, that within that law the punishments are extended," lamented Ocegueda.