six corpses were found this Wednesday in a rural area of the Mexican state of Zacatecas (north) where authorities were looking for seven young people kidnapped last Sunday, reported the local government, which announced that one of the hostages was located alive.
The bodies were transferred to the forensic service of the city of Zacatecas (state capital) to determine if they are those held in the town of Villanueva, while the young man found alive, Yobani Acevedo, remains hospitalized.
“These are six young bodies that were found in the vicinity (of the place where Acevedo was located),” but “we have to wait out of respect for the families,” the secretary of the government of Zacatecas, Rodrigo Reyes, told the press.
The Prosecutor’s Office estimates that “it will be a quick process to be certain whether or not it is about” young people whose ages range between 14 and 18 years old.added the official.
Acevedo, 18, is “stable” after being transported by air to a hospital in Zacatecas, the secretary said. A statement from the Prosecutor’s Office detailed that he has several bruises, including possible fractures to the head and nose.
Two adult men were arrested on Tuesday in Villanueva and “there is a high probability that they are linked” to the events, Reyes announced.
The discovery occurs a month and a half after the kidnapping and possible murder of five other young people, childhood friends, in Lagos de Moreno (Jalisco, west), a case that caused a stir.
While the identification process progresses, the relatives of the Zacatecas boys receive psychological attention from the Prosecutor’s Office, the agency said.
The young people were kidnapped early Sunday morning on a farm in Villanueva, where they had participated in a party.
“These people were asleep (…) when apparently around four in the morning they began to see the presence of a criminal group of people who arrived in vehicles and took them out and took them away,” the prosecutor of Zacatecas, Francisco Murillo.
The Prosecutor’s Office, which launched the search operation together with federal forces, initially ruled out that it was a forced recruitment by criminal groups.
“I believe that this is not the case of these young people,” the prosecutor had stated.
At the beginning of last August, the kidnapping and alleged murder of five young people in Lagos de Moreno shocked the country, as their captivity and torture were broadcast in a photo and video on social networks. None of them have been located.
Seven other people, including members of the LGBT community, also disappeared on September 1 at a rehabilitation center in the state of Guerrero (southern).
Zacatecas, on the drug route to the United States, is the scene of conflicts between the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) cartels, two of the largest criminal organizations in the country.
Mexico has more than 420,000 dead and some 100,000 missing, most attributed to criminal organizations, since the launch of a controversial military anti-drug offensive in December 2006.
Source: Ambito
