Describing what it called "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S. organization Human Rights Watch issued a new report Wednesday with grim implications for the thousands of Mexican civilians who have gone missing in the country's shadowy drug fight.
While inquiring into the cases of 249 missing persons in Mexico, the group said, its researchers found credible evidence that soldiers or police participated in 149 of the disappearances.
The victims included husbands and fathers who went out for groceries and never came back and others dragged from their homes by uniformed men in the middle of the night, the rights group said. Many were last seen being stuffed into military trucks and police vehicles.