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exchange for a car—a deal he accepted. On February 28, the kidnappers instructed Ribera to
drive the car to the neighboring city of Guadalupe and then wait for instructions about a
specific drop off location. His brother-in-law, Horacio Sandoval Torres, accompanied him on
the trip. 130 The men never returned from the journey to hand over the car.
Ribera had been carrying a Nextel on the trip, which emitted a GPS signal that his family
began to trace following his disappearance. 131 Tracking the signal over several days, the
family noticed that it was most frequently emanating from a one-block radius in Guadalupe,
where they suspected Ribera and Sandoval were being held. On March 1, the family
handed this information over to Navy officials at a nearby base. They returned days later to
provide updated locations emitted from the Nextel, but the Navy officials did nothing to
investigate the locations from which the GPS signal was most frequently being emitted. 132
Nor did Navy officials transmit the information provided by the family to the public
prosecutor’s office, which is supposed to investigate such cases. In July, discouraged by
the lack of action taken by the Navy, the family reported the disappearances to the
prosecutor’s office, and provided them with information on the Nextel device, which
continued to emit a signal that the family was tracking. 133 By late September 2011, the
family said, the Nextel stopped emitting a GPS signal. Prosecutors had never once
investigated the locations of Ribera’s Nextel, members of the family said.
The family of Agnolo Pabel Medina Flores, 32, who was abducted by armed men on
August 2, 2010, found authorities similarly unresponsive when they provided information
that could have led to finding him or the people who took him. Medina, was taken from his
home in Guadalupe, Nuevo León, by approximately 20 armed men in camouflage on
August 2, 2010, members of his family told Human Rights Watch. 134 He was carrying a
Nextel phone at the time, which his captors used to communicate with his family to
demand ransom. His family traced the GPS signal of the Nextel and handed the
coordinates over to the military, police, and prosecutors, the victim’s mother told Human
130 Ibid.
131 GPS refers to global positioning system, which uses satellite technology to pinpoint a location. Many two-way radios in
Mexico provide GPS tracking, which can be used to determine the location of the device.
132 Ibid.
133 The families were not given a copy of their complaint. According to relatives, prosecutors informed them that the case file
of the investigation opened by the Nuevo León State Prosecutor’s Office is 175/2011-III-3.
134 Human Rights Watch interview with Blanca Esthela Flores González, mother of Agnolo Pabel Medina Flores, Monterrey,
Nuevo León, June 4, 2012.
45 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2013