Gladiator-style gang prisoners pitted

MEXICO CITY - The most feared drug cartel in Mexico, Zeta, was known to be cruel. They were killed by beheading, mutilated, and even cook your opponent. Now the gang was called the man held a gladiator-style fights with their hostages as a fighter.

The hostages were equipped with a hammer and a machete and then herded into an arena. Kill or be killed principle applies here. Fighters who survive will be the bouncer.

Allegations of the practice is associated with the discovery of several mass graves with more than 400 bodies in it in recent months.

A source associated with drug trafficking admitted that he had heard details about the cruel activities. "The violence has reached a level that even the gangsters were getting sick," he said.

A representative of the prosecutor's office in the state of Durango, where the discovery of one of the largest mass grave in Mexico, said, "If the information is correct, they (Zeta) is completely barbaric. They're crazy."

Mexico's northern border region suffered a violent explosion After the government declared war against the Gulf and Zeta, which formed a cartel in the 1990s by the former army and the fraction of the Gulf.

Drug gang war that has killed nearly 35,000 people in the last five years. That official government records, while the exact number of victims could be more than that.

Since 2006, at least 5300 Mexicans disappear. Witnesses reported seeing people take for granted is taken from the buses in intercity by members of the gang.

"We never again heard from them. They are like the earth swallowed up," Reina said Estrada, who lost contact with her husband, who traveled to Mexico-US border to bisni affairs in March 2009.

"People simply disappeared, many of which disappeared in groups. But there was no ransom demand," said one human rights activist in the state of Coahuila, which borders Texas, United States.

Some of the abductees were forced to kill people. The other was found hanging in the street. While most of the 200 bodies found in mass graves in the state of Tamaulipas apparently killed with a hammer or burned alive.

A report in the Houston Chronicle newspaper, based on the confession of a drug suspect, said, "Your parents were killed. The young woman was raped. While those who are young and productive given a hammer, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death."

When the level of violence continues to increase, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, assigning troops to fight cartels in December 2006. But the decision has now been criticized because it makes the cartels were increasingly desperate.

Last month, security forces seized a number of "narco-tank", war vehicles modified drug gangs, who used to fight the military.

Now even the loyalty of the security forces were called into question, after 74 people were arrested related to the discovery of mass graves in Tamaulipas, 17 of whom were policemen.