This piggy backs of this story:
BBC News - Mexico missing students: Nationwide protests held
Here is a piece by The NY Times on the story:
IGUALA, Mexico — The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city under the thumb of organized crime.
Soon the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.
Along this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then marched to their deaths.
That is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in custody revealed the horrors committed here.
Swarming flies buzz in air reeking of rot. Charred wood and ash in the fetid muck testify to the burning, the macabre tableau in the mountains pointing to the societal decay down below.
The witnesses — members of a local gang that the authorities say has infiltrated the police department in this and other towns — said that 17 students from a local teachers college were apprehended by police officers, turned over to the gang, taken high up on this hill, killed and buried.
They are among 43 students reported missing after a confrontation Sept. 26 with the local police, leaving a series of pressing questions unanswered. Where are the other students? Why would the police want them killed? And if many of these bodies are not those of missing students, whose are they?
It will take time for investigators to confirm the identities of the people buried here. This is a Mexico struggling to overcome a wave of drug and organized crime violence that has left tens of thousands killed and missing.
So, like many others over the years, it may take time for this grave to give up its secrets.
But its very existence has revealed the troubles below: yet another iteration of the dizzying constellation of Mexican criminal groups that corrupt and control with impunity.
A group called Guerreros Unidos, an offshoot of the larger, powerful Beltrán Leyva cartel that officials say is crumbling under law enforcement pressure, held a strong grip here, operating a thriving criminal enterprise that sowed violence and fear.
The other morning, dozens of the city’s police officers lined up with duffel bags packed for a long stay somewhere. They were being marched off by the federal police for questioning about criminal ties. Already, 22 officers are in custody, accused of participating in two bouts of gunfire that left six people dead, including three of the college students, who were part of a group attempting to steal buses to ferry protesters to and from a demonstration over school financing cuts, the authorities said.
Police officers, the state prosecutor said, rounded up several students and turned them over to Guerreros Unidos gang members, who, for reasons not yet known, killed them on the orders of a leader known as El Chucky.
The group’s reach, the authorities now believe, went all the way from collecting hefty parking fines to extracting extortion payments from businesses — with the endorsement of, if not leadership from, City Hall.
The mayor, José Luis Abarca, who is wanted for questioning in the case, is a fugitive. Two brothers of his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, were killed in 2009, and were known operatives in the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel, one of the country’s largest.
This was something of an open secret. Although residents of this city of 120,000, a farming and manufacturing center 120 miles south of Mexico City, readily whisper that city leaders “were all narcos,” as one street vendor put it, it does not appear that the state or federal authorities took much action.
Members of Mr. Abarca’s own party, the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, said this week that they had presented complaints to the federal prosecutor’s office about Mr. Abarca’s suspected ties to organized crime, but that nothing was done.
A national party leader, René Bejarano, said the dossier included sworn testimony from a witness who reported seeing the mayor shoot to death a social activist last year and bury him in a clandestine grave. (It is not clear if it was the same one on the hill.)
Jesús Murillo Karam, the federal prosecutor, told foreign journalists in his office on Tuesday that he never received conclusive evidence of such allegations. Although he acknowledged the wife’s family had organized crime ties, there was no federal investigation of the mayor.
“We don’t investigate based on kinship, only on facts,” he said.
Still, he conceded that Guerreros Unidos had grown powerful after the authorities weakened a rival group, Los Rojos, another offshoot of a larger gang, La Familia. Guerreros Unidos is now believed to be heavily involved in the trafficking of marijuana and heroin as far away as Chicago, he said.
The group has formed alliances with municipal authorities to such an extent that the governor of the state of Guerrero is calling on all 81 mayors in the state and their respective police to be investigated.
Shortly before the shooting began and the students disappeared, Ms. Pineda, who was in charge of the family services office here, was giving a speech in the central square celebrating the year’s accomplishments.
Mexican news reports, citing federal intelligence sources, said the mayor feared that the students, whose school has a history of blocking streets and other militant acts, would descend on the square and ordered the police to stop them and “teach them a lesson.”
Mr. Murillo Karam declined to comment on any theory, saying that a motive had not been established.
At a morgue in the state capital, forensic investigators are working to identify the remains found on the hill. Families of the missing students reel with anguish as they wait to learn if their children were killed, in a country where forced disappearances are usually not solved.
At the top of a hill, empty pits bear silent testimony to murder, but whose?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/w...-mass-graves-point-to-a-death-march.html?_r=0
BBC News - Mexico missing students: Nationwide protests held
Here is a piece by The NY Times on the story:
IGUALA, Mexico — The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city under the thumb of organized crime.
Soon the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.
Along this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then marched to their deaths.
That is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in custody revealed the horrors committed here.
Swarming flies buzz in air reeking of rot. Charred wood and ash in the fetid muck testify to the burning, the macabre tableau in the mountains pointing to the societal decay down below.
The witnesses — members of a local gang that the authorities say has infiltrated the police department in this and other towns — said that 17 students from a local teachers college were apprehended by police officers, turned over to the gang, taken high up on this hill, killed and buried.
They are among 43 students reported missing after a confrontation Sept. 26 with the local police, leaving a series of pressing questions unanswered. Where are the other students? Why would the police want them killed? And if many of these bodies are not those of missing students, whose are they?
It will take time for investigators to confirm the identities of the people buried here. This is a Mexico struggling to overcome a wave of drug and organized crime violence that has left tens of thousands killed and missing.
So, like many others over the years, it may take time for this grave to give up its secrets.
But its very existence has revealed the troubles below: yet another iteration of the dizzying constellation of Mexican criminal groups that corrupt and control with impunity.
A group called Guerreros Unidos, an offshoot of the larger, powerful Beltrán Leyva cartel that officials say is crumbling under law enforcement pressure, held a strong grip here, operating a thriving criminal enterprise that sowed violence and fear.
The other morning, dozens of the city’s police officers lined up with duffel bags packed for a long stay somewhere. They were being marched off by the federal police for questioning about criminal ties. Already, 22 officers are in custody, accused of participating in two bouts of gunfire that left six people dead, including three of the college students, who were part of a group attempting to steal buses to ferry protesters to and from a demonstration over school financing cuts, the authorities said.
Police officers, the state prosecutor said, rounded up several students and turned them over to Guerreros Unidos gang members, who, for reasons not yet known, killed them on the orders of a leader known as El Chucky.
The group’s reach, the authorities now believe, went all the way from collecting hefty parking fines to extracting extortion payments from businesses — with the endorsement of, if not leadership from, City Hall.
The mayor, José Luis Abarca, who is wanted for questioning in the case, is a fugitive. Two brothers of his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, were killed in 2009, and were known operatives in the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel, one of the country’s largest.
This was something of an open secret. Although residents of this city of 120,000, a farming and manufacturing center 120 miles south of Mexico City, readily whisper that city leaders “were all narcos,” as one street vendor put it, it does not appear that the state or federal authorities took much action.
Members of Mr. Abarca’s own party, the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, said this week that they had presented complaints to the federal prosecutor’s office about Mr. Abarca’s suspected ties to organized crime, but that nothing was done.
A national party leader, René Bejarano, said the dossier included sworn testimony from a witness who reported seeing the mayor shoot to death a social activist last year and bury him in a clandestine grave. (It is not clear if it was the same one on the hill.)
Jesús Murillo Karam, the federal prosecutor, told foreign journalists in his office on Tuesday that he never received conclusive evidence of such allegations. Although he acknowledged the wife’s family had organized crime ties, there was no federal investigation of the mayor.
“We don’t investigate based on kinship, only on facts,” he said.
Still, he conceded that Guerreros Unidos had grown powerful after the authorities weakened a rival group, Los Rojos, another offshoot of a larger gang, La Familia. Guerreros Unidos is now believed to be heavily involved in the trafficking of marijuana and heroin as far away as Chicago, he said.
The group has formed alliances with municipal authorities to such an extent that the governor of the state of Guerrero is calling on all 81 mayors in the state and their respective police to be investigated.
Shortly before the shooting began and the students disappeared, Ms. Pineda, who was in charge of the family services office here, was giving a speech in the central square celebrating the year’s accomplishments.
Mexican news reports, citing federal intelligence sources, said the mayor feared that the students, whose school has a history of blocking streets and other militant acts, would descend on the square and ordered the police to stop them and “teach them a lesson.”
Mr. Murillo Karam declined to comment on any theory, saying that a motive had not been established.
At a morgue in the state capital, forensic investigators are working to identify the remains found on the hill. Families of the missing students reel with anguish as they wait to learn if their children were killed, in a country where forced disappearances are usually not solved.
At the top of a hill, empty pits bear silent testimony to murder, but whose?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/w...-mass-graves-point-to-a-death-march.html?_r=0
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