A new report by Reuters is downright disturbing: Members of a prominent Mexican drug cartel are eating the hearts of their victims.
The reports cites a government official, who said the tactic is meant to weed out those trying to infiltrate the Knights Templar cartel.
In this Nov. 5 photo, armed men from to a self-defense group create a checkpoint in the town of Las Colonias, Mexico. Several communities have created their own self-defense groups after a pseudo-religious cartel, known as the "Knights Templar," has for years demanded protection payments from cattlemen, lime growers and other businesses. The groups say they are free of the cartel in several municipalities of the Tierra Caliente, or “Hot Land,” which earned its moniker for the scorching weather but whose name has also come to signify criminal activity. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
According to the Houston Chronicle, people have witnessed the practice:
Apparently witnesses have been privy to seeing new recruits of the Knights Templar feasting on the human hearts of their murder victims, Reuters reports. The practice reportedly was enforced by the cartel's now-deceased founder Nazario Moreno.
"The ritual ranged from dismembering people they intended to kill to sometimes serving up the heart," Alfredo Castillo, Michoacan's federal security commissioner told Reuters.
