The mutilated bodies of a man and a woman have been found hanging from a pedestrian bridge in Nuevo Laredo, northern Mexico. They were apparently killed after using social media to report on crimes.
The Washington Post says that a sign near the bodies warned others not to post information on the internet. “This will happen to all internet busy bodies,” it read. “Shape up, I am on to you.”
The sign named two websites where people can make anonymous tips against drug-violence, Al Rojo Vivo and Blog del Narco.
The note is signed with a Z, presumably for the Zetas gang that controls Nuevo Laredo, as reported in The San Francisco Chronicle.
The unidentified couple were both apparently in their 20s. The woman had been disemboweled and was hanging from her hands and feet. The man was hanging from just his hands.
CNN reports that the Nuevo Laredo case shows how critical social media has become in the fight against drug cartels in Mexico. Andres Monroy-Hernandez, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society told CNN that the threats are “very telling."
"Regardless of why they killed these people, the cartels kind of went out of their way and wrote a message explicitly calling out what is being reported on the Internet," he said.
