The mayor of a city of the State of Jalisco from western Jalisco was arrested for his alleged links to a notorious training site.
José Murguía Santiago, was detained on Saturday as part of a federal investigation into the Izaguirre ranch, where human bones and clothes were found earlier this year.
Located outside Teuchitlán, the city where it is the mayor, the site would have been used by the infamous Cartel of New Generation Jalisco (CJNG).
Addressing the local media, the mayor denied any link with the Ranch. However, the prosecutors claim that he knew his existence and did not act.
The site, which was nicknamed “Ranch of Horror” in Mexico, made the headlines in March when people looking for their loved ones announced that they had discovered shoes, clothes and charred bones after a warning.
The Jalisco Search Warriors, the group that found the Ranch articles, called it as “extermination camp”.
At the time, they blamed the authorities for not having investigated the property properly, which was discovered for the first time by federal soldiers in September.
After the ranch news caused an uproar across Mexico, the government said it would be the investigation of what had happened there.
Speaking last week, the attorney general Alejandro Gertz suggested that the installation had not been used as an extermination or cremation site.
His answer met the frustration of the Jalisco Search Warriors, who said that Gertz was wrong and that the property was more than a simple recruitment and training center.
Last month, two members of the collective, Carmen Morales and his son Jaime Ramirez, were slaughtered, said the office of the State prosecutor of Jalisco.
In recent decades, more than 120,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. Federal authorities do not do enough to investigate these human rights violations and to end the impunity around them, according to the activists.
