Seven of eight officers on the Acatic police force in Jalisco have been detained in connection with the disappearance of five family members who were traveling home to Zapopan last month after vacationing in Mexico City.

Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís explained that eight arrest warrants had been ordered for the crime of forced disappearance.

“Early data which was obtained in the course of the investigations suggests the very probable participation of some of the Acatic police force in the disappearance of these people,” he said.

A police report was filed March 25 for the disappearance of Julio Alberto Villaseñor Cabrera, 35, Jimena Romo Jiménez, 24, their 1-year-old daughter Julia Isabella, Alberto’s sister Virginia Villaseñor Cabrera, and their nine-year-old son.

After the family got lost somewhere in the Altos Sur region, a search operation was initiated in the municipalities of Tepatitlán, Jalostotitlán, San Miguel El Alto and Acatic. Officials are confident that it was in the last municipality that the family disappeared.

“In some localities like Jalostotitlán, Tepatitlán and some others where they had been traveling, they will have only been somewhere they were passing through and it’s very probable that here is where it happened. It’s documented in some early data and for that reason there’s a great many [investigators] working here in this area,” the Attorney General said.

A total of 200 officers have been deployed to find the family.

The motive for the disappearance has not been determined, but there could be a connection to an armed attack which took place days earlier in Guadalajara.

“That person who was assaulted with a gun in the city of Guadalajara, four days earlier in a direct attack, has a very close relationship with two of the disappeared people. So it is very probable that the events were related, but we are still not totally sure,” the Attorney General’s Office added.

Source: Milenio (sp)