COPS ‘EXECUTE’ 22 GANG MEMBERS IN DRUG RAID’

during the operation at a ranch in the western state of Michoacan in May 2015.

It described them as being “executed arbitrarily”.

The report alleged police planted guns on some suspects and moved some bodies to bolster the official version that all the deaths occurred during a gunfight.

In all, 42 civilians and one federal police officer were killed.

Mr Galindo and National Security Commissioner Renato Sales said they accepted the commission’s recommendations, but denied that police executed anyone.

They said the federal officers used necessary force against heavily armed criminals.

After the incident, federal police had said they came under gunfire from passengers of a truck before being led in a chase to the ranch in Tanhuato, near the border with Jalisco state.

But the commission’s report said the government did not produce evidence to support that account.

And it said witness statements suggested 41 federal police officers had sneaked onto the ranch as early as 6am.

Officers started their assault at least an hour earlier than they ACTION: President Nieto maintained in reporting on the incident, the commission said.

According to the commission’s report, after the federal police officer was shot, police called for back-up, and 54 more officers arrived along with a helicopter.

“I think his position was unsustainable after the CNDH report on Tanhuato,” Mexico Citybased security analyst Alejandro Hope said of Mr Galindo.

“It was just a matter of time. There were too many controversies surrounding him.”

The federal police have also been criticised for a June clash in southern state Oaxaca, in which officers fired on protesting teachers and their allies in the town of Nochixtlan.

Eight civilians died, seven of them from gunshot wounds.

Mr Galindo will be replaced by Manelich Castilla Craviotto, who had been in charge of the federal police’s gendarmes force.