Soldiers took them in the night. Now the army's role in Mexico's bloody drug war is on trial
MEXICO CITY - The soldiers took them in the night.
First they came for Nitza Alvarado Espinoza and Jose Alvarado Herrera. The 31-year-old cousins were sitting in a van outside a family member's house when troops forced them into a military truck.
Minutes later, soldiers arrived at the house of another Alvarado cousin, 18-year-old Rocio Alvarado Reyes. She was carried away screaming at gunpoint in front of her young brothers and baby daughter.
It was Dec. 29, 2009 - the last time the cousins were seen alive.
Exactly what happened to the working-class family from Ejido Benito Juarez, a dusty town in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, is the subject of a historic case that will be heard beginning Thursday by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
