Teens jailed over ‘drug car bought at state auction’

A Mexican family says that a car bought at a US government auction came with an unwanted extra: an undiscovered package of cocaine beneath the dashboard.

Sergio Torres Duarte, 18, and his 19-year-old friend, Julio Cesar Moreno, were driving to a soccer match in November when they stopped at a routine police highway checkpoint near the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan. They say they were stunned when officers discovered a kilo (2.2lb) of cocaine beneath the dashboard of their blue 2004 Toyota Sienna. Eight months later, they are still in jail fighting drug trafficking charges.

Torres Duarte’s father, also named Sergio Torres, says he bought the car for $3,900 (€2,923) through a friend at a Customs and Border Protection auction in Feb 2012 in McAllen, Texas.