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Morelia/ AFP
A Mexican mayor and four police officers were arrested in connection with the murder of 10 people whose bodies were burned, officials said, in the latest scandal involving the country’s security forces.
The victims were found in a charred pickup truck in the western state of Michoacan on Saturday. The authorities initially believed the vehicle had exploded during a fuel theft.
But the state’s attorney general, Jose Martin Godoy, said the mayor of the municipality of Alvaro Obregon and four police officers, including a commander, were arrested over the deaths.
Michoacan Governor Silvano Aureoles had earlier said the town’s police chief, his deputy and an investigator were detained for questioning.
The investigation is “strengthening the hypothesis” of involvement by “municipal officers,” Aureoles told reporters, adding that there were also “some direct accusations” against the mayor.
Police officers in three Alvaro Obregon municipal vehicles detained a group of people on Friday night at a grocery store in the town of Cuitzeo and forced them into a red pickup truck, Godoy said.
Witnesses said the mayor, Juan Carlos Arreygue, had ordered police to detain the group and that he was present when they were arrested, he said.
One of those detained by the officers had “differences of a personal nature” with the mayor, the prosecutor said.
“After the arrests, under instructions from the mayor, the civilians were secured, subdued and forced into a van,” he added, citing unidentified witnesses.
“Then, they took the bodies to a field in the municipality of Cuitzeo where they set them on fire.”
The bodies were found in a burned vehicle on a dirt road in Cuitzeo, an area where gangs are known to steal fuel from pipelines.
Prosecutors are continuing the investigation to “determine the level of participation of public servants in this terrible event,” Godoy said. A court will determine their legal status.
Latest scandal
Mexican police and troops have faced a slew of allegations of human rights abuses since the country’s battle against drug trafficking escalated in 2006 with the deployment of armed forces.
20 die in violent weekend
Mexico City / AFP
More than 20 people were killed in three Mexican states plagued by drug violence over the weekend, with 11 found dead in a single day in Acapulco, authorities said.
The victims in Acapulco were found in five different locations in the Pacific resort city on Sunday, amid an increase in homicides across the country this year. Gunmen killed three people at a bar; two men and one woman were found dead in a car near a cemetery with signs of torture and their feet and hands tied; and three bodies were exhumed from a clandestine grave on the outskirts of the city.
Two other people were shot dead in separate incidents in Acapulco, which is among the most violent cities in the world outside war zones, with 111 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015.