Two ex-police officers arrested over discovered Mexico mass killing site

Two ex-police officers have been arrested in Mexico over links to a suspected drug cartel training ground where bones, clothing and shoes were found earlier this month.

The discovery of human remains at what Human Rights Watch has called an “apparent mass killing site” has caused shock in a country where murders and kidnappings are daily occurrences.

In the state attorney general’s office statement, one of the ex-police officers is accused of kidnapping a man who was held at the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlan in the western state of Jalisco.

The former agent and colleagues detained the victim for a supposed search as he was riding a motorbike, before handing him over to a group who took him to the site, it said.

The man was later released from the ranch following an armed confrontation, the statement added.

Mass killing site discovered by families 

Families who are searching for some of the more than 100,000 people missing in Mexico discovered the bodies on the 5th of March at the site where forced recruits are thought to have been held.

Some 124,000 people are officially registered as missing in Mexico, mostly since 2006 when the government declared war on drug cartels.

The Guerreros Buscadores collective – a group dedicated to locating missing people – described the site as an “extermination center” with “clandestine crematoriums”.

The Mexican attorney general’s office, which is set to take over the investigation, said on Sunday that a second former police officer had been arrested in connection to the case. The chief who was in-charge of both ex-officers when in police force had already been detained.

The attorney General Alejandro Gertz promised that there would be no cover-up in the investigation, saying extensive evidence meant that the “truth will come out.”

He listed multiple flaws in the initial investigation overseen by the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office, including a failure to thoroughly search the site.