Mexican mayor arrested over alleged links to cartel training camp

Prosecutors successful Mexico person arrested the politician of Teuchitlán successful occidental Jalisco authorities arsenic portion of their probe into a adjacent cartel grooming site.

The mayor, José Murguía Santiago, is suspected of colluding with the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG), which helium has denied.

The probe was launched aft activists discovered bony fragments and hundreds of discarded shoes, backpacks and items of covering astatine the Izaguirre ranch extracurricular the municipality successful March.

Rights groups said that they feared the ranch had been utilized arsenic an "extermination camp", wherever radical were forcedly recruited and trained, and those who refused were tortured and killed.

The find by radical searching for their missing relatives of what appeared to beryllium grounds of wide killings astatine the tract shocked the country, wherever cartel unit is rife.

• Read: Ovens and bony fragments - BBC visits Mexican cartel 'extermination' site

Mexico's Attorney-General Alejandro Gertz gave a quality league past week updating journalists connected the national probe into the ranch.

He confirmed that the tract had been utilized arsenic a grooming centre for recruits of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, 1 of the astir feared and almighty transnational cause trafficking gangs, which has its powerfulness basal successful Jalisco.

However, helium said that determination was nary grounds that it had been utilized arsenic an extermination and cremation site.

According to the attorney-general, bony fragments discovered determination were not caller and forensic tests suggested that the fires lit astatine the ranch would not person been blistery capable to dispose of quality remains.

Gertz's statements caused choler among "searchers", the sanction fixed to relatives looking for the much than 120,000 radical who person been reported missing successful Mexico implicit the past 2 decades.

They said that his quality league raised much questions than it answered and failed to code to whom the galore abandoned shoes recovered astatine the ranch belonged and what had go of those people.

Gertz insisted that the authorities would proceed looking into whether determination had been immoderate collusion betwixt the CJNG and section officials.

The apprehension of Mayor Murguía Santiago is portion of that ongoing investigation.

Prior to his arrest, the politician had said that helium had thing to hide. "If they privation to analyse me, fto them, I'm cleanable and consenting to accidental what I know," helium told section media.

But prosecutors allege that helium knew of the beingness of the grooming centre and did not enactment connected that knowledge.