Saturday 24 August 2013

Grave in Mexico said to yield bodies of youngsters missing for months

After months of speculation over how a dozen individuals could disappear without trace in Mexico, and anger at the state's inability to find them, authorities were on 23 August cited as saying that tests on six of 13 bodies found buried in Tlalmanalco in the central Estado de México indicated they may well belong to 12 or 13 youngsters kidnapped in Mexico City on 26 May. A deputy-state prosecutor for Mexico City or Estado de México said the grave yielded 13 bodies not seven as reported initially, and six were identified as belonging to the missing kidnap victims, Europa Press reported on 24 August, citing Mexican press reports. Judicial authorities had in recent months faced the ire of relatives of the disappeared for their apparent confusion and half-competent investigations. A conservative member of the capital's legislative assembly said authorities found the grave by luck while looking for an arms cache, not for any "serious investigative work," Milenio reported on 23 August. Federico Döring Casar, a member of the National Action Party in Mexico City's legislature, said police went to the spot after an anonymous caller phoned to say arms could be hidden there. Assembly members were cited as saying that the "Heaven case," named after the nightclub where the youngsters were kidnapped, remained open until authorities find and punish the murderers. Milenio cited another Federal District legislator Santiago Taboada Cortina as saying that the case showed organised crime was present and active in the capital, contrary to the assertions made by the city's mayor that the cartels and criminal gangs had not come to the capital. Separately, two men were found hanging by a road on 21 or 22 August in the north-central state of Zacatecas, in a suspected tit-for-tat killing between two drug cartels, Proceso reported. The Zetas cartel was suspected to have hanged the two, apparently in reprisal for the Gulf Cartel "torturing" and hanging on 18 August a boy an a girl aged 19 years, with a note by them alleging they were kidnappers. Presumably the victims had ties to the rival cartels. In the northern state of Durango, the brother of the mayor of Canelas was found dead on 23 August, and reported as murdered by unspecified means; the director of public prosecutions Sonia Yadira de la Garza had cited him as suspected as involved in criminal activities, Proceso reported on 23 August.

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