Perhaps taking a page from Middle Eastern despots clinging to power, Mexican drug cartels are cracking down on their critics on social networks. The bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a pedestrian bridge in Nuevo Laredo, a border town, and nearby signs indicated the pair had been killed for denouncing the cartels on social networks, Mariano Castillo reports for CNN. "This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the internet... You better (expletive) pay attention. I'm about to get you," one sign said. The victims had been tortured, Castillo writes:
A man and a woman, both in their early 20s, were left hanging like cuts of meat. The woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. She was then hung from the bridge by her feet and hands, topless. The bloodied man was suspended next to her by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply you can see the bone.
Last week, "Twitter terrorists" in Mexico faced 30 years in prison for falsely reporting attacks on a school. But this incident marks a different kind of Twitter terrorism. CNN reports Ricardo Mancillas Castillo, a local investigator, said he'd never seen threats against Internet users from the cartels before. (In recent months, the number of children killed in the drug violence has grown; above, the kids' section of a border town cemetery.)
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Elspeth Reeve
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