Summary The officers beat and interrogated the group before handing them to the cartel members.
MEXICO CITY (AFP) - One of eight police officers accused of illegally detaining five young Mexicans confessed that they were murdered after the agents delivered them to a drug cartel, authorities said Tuesday.
Four men, all in their 20s, and a 16-year-old girl vanished on January 11 after they were detained by Veracruz state police officers in Tierra Blanca, eastern Mexico.
The officer told investigators the group was taken to a ranch and handed to members of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, deputy interior minister Roberto Campa said.
The youths were killed at the ranch, their bodies burned and crushed in a sugarcane grinder, Campa told Radio Formula.
Authorities said last month that bones and blood stains found at the ranch matched the DNA of two of the victims.
Six drug cartel members are being sought by the authorities for being "material suspects" in the case, he said.
The officers have been charged with "forced disappearance" -- a term used for abductions committed by officials.
Campa said the officers were "at the service of the cartel."
The detained officer told investigators they grabbed the five youngsters because they looked "suspicious" as they drove in a car with tinted windows and Mexico City license plates.
The officers beat and interrogated the group before handing them to the cartel members.
Campa said the crime was similar to the high-profile case of 43 students who disappeared in the southern state of Guerrero in 2014.
Prosecutors say officers in the city of Iguala detained the students and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which confused the 43 young men with a rival gang, killed the group and incinerated their bodies.
The Iguala case put a spotlight on the collusion between corrupt officials and drug cartels as well as the 26,000 disappearances that have been reported across the country in the past decade.
