2 ex-Mexican police officers arrested over alleged cartel killing site where bones, shoes were found
Two former Mexican police officers were arrested for alleged links to a suspected drug cartel training ground where bones, shoes and clothing were found earlier this month, authorities said.
The "ranch of horror," as some local media called it, in the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlan 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.
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, who took over the investigation last week, promised there would be no cover-up in the investigation, saying extensive evidence meant that the "truth will come out."
On Sunday, the state attorney general's office said one of the former police officers arrested is accused of kidnapping a man who was held at the ranch. The former officer and colleagues detained the victim for a supposed search as he was riding a motorbike, before handing him over to a group who took him to the site, the statement added.
The victim was later released from the ranch following an armed confrontation, the state attorney general's office said.
Both ex-police officers belonged to a police department whose chief had already been detained.
Some 124,000 people are officially registered as missing in Mexico, mostly since 2006 when the government declared war on drug cartels.
Guerreros Buscadores, a so-called collective dedicated to locating missing people, discovered the human remains on March 5, sparking protests across Mexico. They described the site as an "extermination center" with "clandestine crematoriums."
The United Nations Human Rights Office earlier this month described the finding in Jalisco as a "deeply disturbing reminder of the trauma of disappearances linked to organized crime across the country."
Multiple mass graves have been found in recent months in Mexico. In January, at least 56 bodies were discovered in unmarked mass graves in northern Mexico, not far from the border with the United States.
A mass grave discovered last December in a suburb of Guadalajara with dozens of bags of dismembered body parts contained the remains of 24 people, authorities said. That same month, Mexican authorities said they recovered a total of 31 bodies from pits in Chiapas, a state plagued by cartel violence.
