Mass grave found in restive southern Mexican state

Mass grave found in restive southern Mexican state

BY JORGE DAN
IGUALA Mexico Sat Oct 4, 2014 8:22pm EDT

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1 OF 5. Soldiers guard an area where a mass grave was found, in Colonia las Parotas on the outskirts of Iguala, in Guerrero October 4, 2014.
CREDIT: REUTERS/JORGE DAN LOPEZ

(Reuters) - Authorities have found a mass grave in the restive southern Mexican state of Guerrero, the state attorney general's office said on Saturday, at a time when police are scouring the area for nearly four dozen people missing after a rash of violence.

The discovery was made just before midday in the northwestern outskirts of the city of Iguala. Local and state police cordoned off the entrance to road leading up a hill where multiple police vehicles had entered.

The state prosecutor, flanked by armed guards, visited the site, but only confirmed authorities were examining the grave.

"In the next few hours we will determine the cause of death and the number of bodies," said Jorge Valdez, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, adding that bodies were being exhumed.

Iguala is located about 120 miles (193 km) south of Mexico City in the increasingly violent state of Guerrero, the site of clashes involving students, police and armed men last week. At least six people were killed in a spate of incidents.

The state governor said earlier this week that photos showed police had taken some of the students away. Twenty-two police officers were arrested in Guerrero on Sunday accused of killing two students during the clashes last week.

Local government officials criticized the police for showing an excessive use of force with the students in Guerrero, where gangs have evolved from a fragmented drug cartel and are fighting turf wars.

Thirteen of an original group of 57 missing people re-emerged this week. Some had hidden, others had gone home. Dozens are still unaccounted for.

Many mass graves have been found across Mexico in recent years and months, the legacy of grisly drug gang violence that has killed around 100,000 people since 2007.

Separately, Mexico's Attorney, General Jesus Murillo, said this week that three soldiers have been accused of homicide in a late June shootout in which 22 suspected gang members were killed.

Murillo said the three were part of a group of 8 soldiers held over the June 30 incident in Tlatlaya on the southern fringes of the State of Mexico, which borders Guerrero and Michoacan.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0HT0QB20141005

6 hidden mass graves may hold missing Mexican students

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5431edb0/t...01/550/550x309Police stand guard at Pueblo Viejo, on the outskirts of Iguala, Mexico, where a mass grave was found Saturday. (Yuri Cortez / AFP/Getty Images)


By TRACY WILKINSON contact the reporter

Mexican officials searching makeshift graves for missing university students

Clandestine graves found in southern Mexico; may hold bodies of missing students

Mexican authorities have discovered six hidden graves that may contain the bodies of more than 40 university students who went missing a week ago after clashing with local police in the violent state of Guerrero.

The semiofficial National Human Rights Commission said Sunday that experts will conduct DNA tests in an attempt to identify bodies found in the graves. It was not yet clear how many bodies were present.

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5431edb0/t...02/550/550x309Mexican police enter La Parota colony, on the outskirts of Iguala, Mexico, where a mass grave was found Saturday. (European Pressphoto Agency)


Guerrero state Health Minister Lazaro Mazon said nine bodies, burned beyond recognition, were recovered from the muddy pits in the first series of exhumations. He said it could take two weeks before identifications are made. Later, state prosecutor Inaky Blanco said 28 bodies had been recovered, in various conditions.

Frantic parents who have been demanding the return of their children attempted to reach the site of the makeshift graves, near a slum on the outskirts of the city of Iguala, about 80 miles south of Mexico City. They and supporters blocked major highways in the area for several hours.

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“You took them alive, we want them returned alive,” read a huge banner unfurled across the highway that leads from Mexico City to Acapulco.

On Sept. 26-27, Iguala city police attacked a group of students rallying against government policies. Six people were killed, more than two dozen injured and more than 50 students vanished. About 15 students eventually were found hiding in their homes, but 43 remained missing. Within days, 22 police officers were arrested for what prosecutors said was use of excessive force.

Parents and surviving students have said they last saw some of the missing being taken away by police. Several parents offered up license plates of the police vehicles that took away their children.

Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre said the local police corps was thoroughly penetrated by criminal organizations, at whose behest the police may have been acting. He said that after the discovery of the graves, an additional eight people were arrested. He did not identify them.

If the graves turn out to contain the students, it will suggest that they were summarily executed by their captors, be they police or cartel criminals. And if that proves true, it would constitute the most egregious human rights atrocity in the 2-year-old government of President Enrique Peña Nieto and one of the worst in recent years.

The students were from a special kind of rural university in the town of Ayotzinapa, near Iguala. They had a contentious relationship with authorities and often spearheaded demonstrations.

After they went missing late last month, the federal government dispatched army, navy and national police to take over the search. The federal prosecutor’s office took charge of the case as soon as the graves were discovered late Saturday.

“Mexico cannot let such a serious incident go unpunished,” Tomas Zeron, head of investigations from the federal attorney general’s office, said.

More than 20,000 people are registered as having disappeared in Mexico in the last eight years, giving rise to an intense citizens’ movement to find them. Most never reappear.

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Mexico Says Students Not Among Dead in Mass Grave

None of the 28 bodies found in a mass grave in restive southwestern Mexico belongs to a group of 43 missing students, Mexico's attorney general said on Tuesday.

The students, who are feared to have been massacred by police in league with gang members, went missing in the southwestern state of Guerrero on Sept. 26.

The discovery of a series of mass graves near the town of Iguala, where the students went missing, has sent shockwaves throughout Mexico, where around 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2007.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo said none of the charred remains found in the first mass grave matched genetically with the missing students.

"What I can say is that the first mass grave we found, the very first ones from where we already have results, I can say the (remains) don't match the DNA of the families of these young people," he said. But authorities had found another mass grave near the site, Murillo said, and were now checking those remains. He also said that 14 more police officers had been arrested following the earlier arrests of at least 22.

IN-DEPTH

Protesters in Mexico Demand Answers on Missing Students
Mass Graves Found Near Mexico Town Where Students Went Missing
Mexico Massacre Victims Feared to Be Missing Students

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Mexican cartel leader kills self; bodies in grave not missing students

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A rainbow forms a backdrop for a soldier standing guard in Iguala, in Mexico's Guerrero state, on Oct. 6. (Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)

By KATE LINTHICUM

Mexico says cartel leader linked to 43 missing students in Iguala killed himself after being surrounded
Mexico's attorney general says 28 bodies found in mass grave were not those of missing students


The leader of a Mexican drug gang suspected in the disappearance of dozens of college students last month killed himself Tuesday after a gun battle with federal police, authorities said.

Mexico's attorney general later said that 28 bodies discovered in a mass grave do not belong to any of the students, who disappeared after a confrontation with police in the city of Iguala.

Related story: Mexican authorities say police shot, wounded German student Kate Linthicum


The whereabouts of the 43 missing students are still unknown, said Atty. Gen. Jesus Murillo Karam, adding that authorities also do not know the identities or fate of the people found in the grave.

Dozens of police officers from Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula have been arrested and reportedly have admitted to taking part in the abduction of the students. Prosecutors allege that police abducted the students and then leaders of Guerrero Unidos cartel ordered them killed.

Benjamin Mondragon Pereda, leader of the cartel, shot himself early Tuesday after being surrounded by police in Jiutepec, a city in Morelos state, said Gonzalo Ponce, a spokesman for the Mexican government.

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Authorities said Mondragon first negotiated for the safe exit of a pregnant woman he was with at the time.

"When he saw that there was no escape, he shot himself," Ponce said.
Prosecutors accuse Mondragon's gang, which is believed to specialize in the transport of marijuana and heroin to Chicago, of working with local authorities on the night the 43 freshmen from a rural teaching college went missing.

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Guerrero state prosecutor Inaky Blanco said the students had attended a demonstration in Iguala that turned violent when police opened fire on protesters, killing six. Afterward, Blanco said, dozens of students were apparently detained by police. They were then probably ordered killed by cartel leaders, he said.

Several mass graves have been discovered in the area. The mayor of Iguala, who is believed to have connections to Guerrero Unidos, has fled town.

The recent events have highlighted the close ties between local authorities and organized crime in towns across Guerrero, one of Mexico's most dangerous states.

On Monday, the mayor of Cocula was arrested along with dozens of local police officers on suspicion of having ties to Guerrero Unidos, according to Mexican media reports.

Protesters angry over the events in Iguala have held violent demonstrations in recent days. On Monday, hundreds of people clashed with riot police and set fire to the Guerrero government headquarters in the state capital, Chilpancingo.

According to local media reports, protesters were gathering again in Chilpancingo on Tuesday afternoon. Some reportedly had come from universities in other parts of Mexico to register their anger at the violence against students.

Over the weekend, authorities in Chilpancingo fired on a van carrying several university students after it failed to stop at a police checkpoint. Officials said police mistakenly believed the van was carrying kidnapping suspects who had killed an officer in an earlier shootout.

One student, a German national studying at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, was wounded.

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Federal police take control of 13 towns in Mexico

Maria Versa, Associated Press9:53 p.m. MST October 19, 2014

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(Photo: Marco Ugarte/ AP)

MEXICO CITY — Federal police have taken control of 13 municipalities in southern Mexico where local police are suspected of links to organized crime and possibly to the case of 43 missing students, a top official said.

The municipalities are all within a roughly 125-mile (200-kilometer) radius of Iguala, the town where the students from a rural teachers' college disappeared more than three weeks ago after a confrontation with police. Twelve of the municipalities are in Guerrero state and one is in Mexico state. Among them are the tourist destinations of Taxco and Ixtapan de la Sal.

National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said Sunday night that authorities investigating the disappearance of the students found "irregularities" and "presumed links to organized crime" in the 13 municipal police forces.

Federal police have assumed control of public security in the municipalities, the police chiefs have been sent to a special center for "certification" and their guns are being tested, he said.

Federal forces had already disarmed local police in Iguala and Cocula, and arrested a total of 36 police officers. Both the mayor and police chief of Iguala are fugitives and accused of links to the local drug cartel, Guerrero Unidos, believed to have worked with police in disappearing the students.

The disappearance of the students has outraged Mexicans, with thousands of protesters marching recently in Mexico City, Acapulco and elsewhere to demand their safe return.

On Friday, Mexican officials announced the arrest of Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, the purported leader of Guerreros Unidos. He was detained Thursday on a highway leaving Mexico City, federal prosecutor Tomas Zeron said.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had said he hoped the arrest would bring new leads in the case.

Rubido said Sunday night that the search for the 43 students is being carried out by land, air and water with the help of relatives and the International Red Cross.

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