Mass grave of over 100 corpses discovered in Mexico

Mass grave of over 100 corpses discovered in Mexico

Authorities in Mexico are investigating why over 100 bodies of crime victims were dumped into a mass grave in a central province without official authorization.

The unidentified corpses, reportedly over 105, were discovered in Morelos province that has one of the highest rates of abduction in Mexico, said province prosecutor Javeir Perez in a statement on Friday.

In Mexico, morgue workers normally prepare bodies of unidentified people to be buried in common graves. They wrap them in plastic bags and label them with a case file number for any later identification.

According to Perez, the common graves must have official permits for the burials but this site was not authorized.

“There are bodies that don’t have any case file number. We don’t know why they are there, if they were executed, if they have relatives, if any investigation was ever done in their cases,” said Rafael Idiaquez, the spokesman for the human rights commission of Morelos.
Local security officials are currently under investigation for dereliction of duty and violating the laws concerning the burial of bodies, the statement further read, though it did not disclose the number of officials and their identities.

Since the 1990s, Morelos has been gripped by a surge of abductions and executions, when the Juárez and Beltrán-Leyva Cartels, and later other drug gangs, came into the province. Many top officials of the province have been accused of or convicted for helping drug gangs.