They tried it in August and they succeeded on New Year's Day with an attack from abroad and a riot inside the Cereso 3 prison in Ciudad Juárez, a coordinated action to free the leader of the Mexicles, Ernesto Alfredo Piñón de la Cruz, El Net.
With him, 24 more inmates escaped, after a shooting in which 10 jailers and seven prisoners died.
The revolt has revealed, once again, the overcrowded situation in some Mexican prisons, but also the luxurious conditions of some cells in which the most dangerous drug traffickers have television, cell phones, weapons, and safes where they store the rich. profits from a well-stocked drug sale.
All this has been reported by the federal authorities,
New Year's Day is one of those dates that criminals use for their outrages, with the understanding that the guard is lower than usual.
But in Cereso 3 they were already warned, because last August there was a riot in which El Neto was already mentioned as the target of the altercation.
"He is the origin of everything," Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said at a press conference.
Also who triggered "the whole situation a few months ago" in Ciudad Juárez.
Now all that remains is to bury the dead and search for the fugitives, a task in which close to a thousand agents of the Army, National Guard and state police are working, with fences in the border city, bus stations, airport and customs crossings. through which thousands of people enter the United States every day.
Two women, relatives of one of the inmates of Cereso number 3, embrace outside the prison after the riot this Sunday.HERIKA MARTINEZ (AFP)
At six-thirty in the morning on Sunday the riots began in the city, actions to mislead the police of the main objective, the assault on Cereso 3. At that time, a guard at the guardhouse was attacked.
There was a second skirmish between police and criminals on another street in which two attackers were killed.
Half an hour later, the riot began and the head of the guards deployed his forces to control it.
He cost dearly.
The prisoners had weapons and fatally discharged them at 10 security officers.
"They were attacked by the inmates, who had firearms," Sandoval assured.
Around the prison, several armored vans with armed men had approached, as the neighbors could see.
The shootings were part of the plan and some bullets injured relatives of the prisoners who were waiting for visits, according to local media reports.
Chaos had its noise within and without.
With a prison in which 3,901 inmates live, well above the population it can support, some of them highly dangerous, the municipal police limited themselves to asking for reinforcements from the outside and it was the military, national guards and state police who entered " at 10 in the morning", according to the information provided by Sandoval and the Secretary of Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, to consider the situation controlled "at noon".
By then the riot had left its trail of chaos and death: columns of black smoke could be seen from the street and weapons were used profusely.
When the fires were put out and the count was made, seven long weapons were seized inside the prison and another 17 in the actions deployed in the street.
And a total of 9 short weapons.
Cartridges, bulletproof vests and dozens of doses of drugs.
Official list of escaped inmates from the Ciudad Juárez prison, projected during a press conference in Mexico City, on January 2, 2022.Victoria Valtierra Ruvalcaba (Cuartoscuro)
The plan was perfectly orchestrated and in just a few minutes, after six in the morning, according to reports from the municipal police cited in local media, the criminals found the corridors and cells and released El Neto.
But the disorder allowed the escape of 24 more inmates, who spread panic in several streets, stripping the citizens of their cars to flee.
The Sin Embargo digital portal mentions up to four neighbors who were forced to get out of their vehicles and hand them over to the criminals.
El Neto is the leader of the Mexicles, a criminal group linked to the Caborca cartel, imprisoned in Cereso 3 since 2009 for crimes of kidnapping and homicide, in a criminal career that began at a very young age and has linked him to different cartels.
The riot that broke out last August in that same prison had the objective of freeing the criminal, but they did not succeed.
For this, a fight was triggered between the Mexicles and the Chapos, supposedly ordered by him.
“The toughest and heartless drug trafficker of the Mexicle criminal group, El Neto, a substitute for El Lalo, escaped today from Cereso with the help of an armed commando.
He has been one of the generators of the greatest violence in the city since the prison, and now he is back on the streets, ”the former governor of Chihuahua, PAN member Javier Corral, summarized in a tweet.
Ernesto Alfredo Piñón de la Cruz, alias el Neto, after his first arrest, in August 2009. RR.SS.
Politics has been heard after this attack that has cost the lives of 10 prison officers.
Corral has accused the current governor, Maru Campus, also a PAN member, of having former collaborators of Governor César Duarte (PRI) "controlling the Chihuahua prisons", and has mentioned Eduardo Guerrero Durán, director of prisons in the Duarte Administration , a man with a past of accusations of corruption and relations with the narco.
Some information links him to bribery to allow a third escape from El Chapo.
César Duarte is currently incarcerated, related to several judicial processes.
In this skein of corruption and criminality, political statements now unfold.
In this morning's press conference, both Rosa Icela Rodríguez and General Sandoval have insistently pointed out the “state” responsibility of Cereso 3. “Security depends on the State.
At the federal level there are programs to move inmates if there is an excess [of prison population], but we have not received a request, these are procedures that the State must carry out,” they have pointed out.
"Some States need to work better in prisons, and the best way is to prevent and with various actions, not only with the transfer of dangerous [prisoners]," Rodríguez pointed out more directly.
Sandoval has reported that personnel are already planned for an eventual transfer of inmates, since there is "a request, but it is not yet complete by the State."
The general has also mentioned the "VIP cells" that exist in Cereso 3 and the seizure of 1.7 million pesos in a safe in one of them.
“These are well-groomed cells, in different conditions from the others.”
One of the heaviest criminals in Mexico escaped from them this Sunday.
The Net is already on the streets.
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