Allegations from a Kidnapped Brother

A new video making the rounds in Chihuahua features the kidnapped brother of the former state attorney general, Patricia González, accusing her of working for La Línea and Vicente Carrillo.

I have no idea whether or González is 100 percent clean or as dirty as the Miami Hurricanes in the late 1980s, but, in general, we should resist accepting the claims of videos of forced confessions from kidnapped and often tortured people, for whom a false confession could be held out as a way to save their own or their family's lives. The videotaped confession has been employed in La Laguna a couple of times, and the conclusions were often dubious. More to the point, such videos are far too easy to manipulate to take too seriously. A bloodthirsty criminal gang could incriminate whomever they wanted. They could kidnap Federal Police officer and force him to swear up and down that García Luna is Pablo Escobar's illegitimate son and that he and Chapo are friends going way back, or some other nonsense, but that wouldn't make it true.

Of course, it's hard to ignore the allegations once they are in the ether, so I'm not sure what exactly I'm calling for other than for people to be skeptical of such videos. The authorities in Chihuahua are investigating the veracity of the González video, which seems appropriate.