A mayor from a western Mexico town was arrested as part of a probe into a suspected drug cartel training camp where human bones and clothing were found, a federal official said.
Teuchitlán Mayor José Murguía Santiago was arrested as part of an investigation by government prosecutors into probable omissions or complicity of authorities with the Jalisco New Generation cartel, a federal source told AFP on Saturday.
The source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Murguía was arrested late Saturday afternoon, according to federal arrest records.
The cartel, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says has some 19,000 in its ranks, developed rapidly into an extremely violent and capable force after it split from the Sinaloa cartel following the 2010 killing of Sinaloa cartel capo Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal by the military.
The “ranch of horror,” as some local media called it, in the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlán in the western state of Jalisco was first discovered in September 2024. Six months later, people searching for missing relatives found clothing and human remains, raising questions about the initial investigation, including a failure to search the site thoroughly.
Human Rights Watch called it an “apparent mass killing site.”
The cartel allegedly used the ranch to train newly recruited gunmen, senior officials have said.
The Guerreros Buscadores collective, a group dedicated to locating missing relatives, has described the Teuchitlán ranch as an “extermination center” with “clandestine crematoriums” where forced recruits were thought to have been held by the cartel.
Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch told reporters in late March that there was “no evidence that it was an extermination camp.”
But he also said that an alleged recruiter — who was arrested — said that cartel members tortured and killed recruits who refused to cooperate or tried to flee.
The attorney general’s office, which has denied that executions were systematically carried out, took over the investigation after a complaint from Guerreros Buscadores.
The group found buried bones, clothing, shoes and other objects at the ranch, which went unnoticed during a search in September by authorities who raided it following reports of gunfire.
According to the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office, 10 people were arrested, two captives freed and a dead body found along with skeletal remains in September.
Besides Mayor Murguía, about a dozen others have been arrested in the case, including a police chief from a neighboring municipality and two of his officers.
More than 127,000 people are registered as missing in Mexico, most of them since 2006 when the government declared war on drug trafficking groups.
By state, Jalisco has the highest number of missing persons cases, with more than 15,000.
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