U.S. Vigilante Leader Nestora Salgado Receives Support for Release

Supporters are asking for the release of a U.S. vigilante leader who is held at a Mexican jail, according to the Associated Press.

Nestora Salgado who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico was arrested in August 2013 after a group of people said they were kidnapped by the community force she leads.

However, the community force in the town of Olinala say they detained the group of people.

"The government knows perfectly well that all of the charges they're accusing Nestora of are false," said her sister Cleotilde Salgado Garcia.

Nestora was eventually cleared for the kidnapping charges by a federal judge last year. Yet, she is still held in the Mexican jail for related state charges.

Her supporters and relatives said that the people Nestora and her community police force detained were never demanded bail or mistreated in their care.

The accusers said that the community force demanded ransom after kidnapping them but commanders of the community force said that many of those detained were youths held at the request of their parents for "re-education."

"The communitarian system does not request any bail," regional community police commander Cruz Morales Reyes said during a news conference in Mexico City.

"It does not request any ransom. There is no amount of money that can get someone out."

It is completely legal for Olinala and Geurrero as well as other indigenous communities to organize their own police forces, according to state laws.

Morales said that the community police was organized to stop corruption within the local government and organized crime. The group also arrests young people who parents say that they have become out of control.

Francisco Flores Jimenez was one of the young people whose parents sent him to the vigilantes to be "re-educated."

"In my case, I was never mistreated," he said.

Flores said that he was taught the value of hard work and had to do manual labor. The detainees who worked hard were fed well while those who didn't were given whatever was available.