According to Newsweek en Español, the Attorney General of Justice of Nuevo León found the remains of 56 people, most of them reported as missing since 2010 and located in a clandestine grave in February 2016.
The grave, reported the Procuraduría, is located in the foothills of the Cerro del Fraile, in the Municipality of Garcia, neighbor of the industrial city of Monterrey.
Since the grave was found, “Prosecutor’s Office Expert Services works on the identification of bone fragments and dental pieces found,” the prosecution said in a statement, noting that so far, the remains of 56 people have useful profiles for identity search”.
Out of these 56 bodies, authorities were able to identify 24 with DNA analysis, all were reported missing in 2010 and the remains will be delivered to their families. The other 32 victims have not been identified yet.
The Attorney General of Justice of Nuevo León identified the remains of 56 people (Photo: Cuartoscuro/file)
Police sources who asked for anonymity (because they were not authorized to give statements to the press), said that these 56 people were victims of the Los Zetas cartel.
Founded in the 1990s by elite military defectors, Los Zetas have fought against rival Gulf Cartel for the territory of Nuevo Leon for decades. And both criminal organizations have the habit of burying their victims in clandestine massive graves.
In 2010, the metropolitan area of Monterrey began to live a violent time of murders due to the confrontation between these two crimminal groups, in addition to sporadic battles with the Arellano Felix cartel.
Authorities in Nuevo Leon are also investigating another pit detected at the “Las Abejas” ranch, in the municipality of Salinas Victoria, where they found tens of thousands of bone fragments that correspond to at least 31 people.
Since 2006, there have been more than 170,000 murders and more than 28,000 unsolved missing person cases, although these official figures do not specify how many of these were victims of violence related to organized crime.
In the neighboring state of Coahuila, more than 4,000 bone fragments have been found since 2015 in unpopulated terrain and so far have been able to relate these remains to three people.
One of Los Zetas’ most outspoken crimes was made public on August 24, 2010, when a survivor that managed to escape from these murderers, reported the massacre of 72 migrants, mostly Central Americans and some South Americans, at a ranch in the northern state of Tamaulipas, a crime authorities attributed to Los Zetas.
Source: Newsweek en Español
