State Prosecutor Accuses Authorities of Turning a Blind Eye to Mass Burial Grounds Deutsche Welle
go to original March 18, 2017

Mexico's largest clandestine graves discovered (Al Jazeera English)

Update: Mexico Drug War Investigators Unearth 47 More Skulls in Mass Graves (Reuters)

Veracruz state prosecutor Jorge Winckler Ortiz said that the scale of mass graves in the eastern region was so great a bulldozer or mechanical excavator must have been used to create them.

Officials have ceased to dig for bodies in unidentified clandestine burial grounds, Winckler added, simply because there is no further room in forensic laboratories for more human remains.

"There are a lot of towns where clandestine graves have been found," Veracruz's top prosecutor said. "There are pits where we are not working because we don't have space to put the bodies that we might find."

Winckler also added that DNA testing of the bodies would begin in May once authorities receive the required funds.

Winckler made his remarks at a mass burial ground in Colinas de Santa Fe, a port city some 385 kilometers east of Mexico City where authorities recently uncovered at least 242 bodies in 124 graves. Such mass burial sites often contain bodies piled directly one atop the other - a typical sign pointing to drug gang killings.

Authorities found out about the gruesome field in Colinas when mothers searching for their missing children uncovered the first of the hidden graves in August 2016. The relatives went searching for their offspring's remains after the then-in-power officials failed to take action.

Read the rest at Deutsche Welle

Related: Veracruz State Has So Many Graves, Lacks Space for Bodies Exhumed (Associated Press)

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