Police and forensic experts continue to uncover human remains at locations near Guadalajara, Jalisco.
On Thursday, after the search was widened near a site where 138 plastic bags of human remains had already been discovered, 17 bags of remains were found in a nearby area, in the municipality of Tala.
Jalisco Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís said his team of experts will go wherever the search dogs lead them, and will not stop until they have uncovered everything.
“We aren’t leaving until we have done a complete examination of this area,” he said of the search that began on September 3 in a field in Zapopan where his team has found 138 plastic bags of human remains in two mass graves.
Supported by municipal police and soldiers, the team extended the search radius to 200 meters from the secret grave in which 119 bags were found between September 3 and 11. They are believed to contain the remains of at least 40 people.
After resuming the search on Wednesday, experts from the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences found 19 more bags of human remains and clothing in a nearby ditch.
Solís said that expert reports have confirmed 29 bodies, of which 13 are complete and 16 are incomplete, and he believes that the number will grow to around 40 once the genetic test results have come back.
For now, Solís does not intend to involve the families of disappeared persons in the search due to security, despite requests from the families.
Blanca Trujillo, a prosecutor specializing in missing persons, said that of the 119 bags uncovered in the initial search, only five bodies have been identified by relatives, among them one woman.
She said that 27 mass graves have been found in Jalisco so far in 2019 with a total of 123 bodies, 28 of which have been identified.
Jalisco is one of the regions in the country with the highest presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
The cartel is now considered the most active criminal organization in Mexico, having risen above the Sinaloa Cartel, weakened after the fall of its leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Source: Sin Embargo (sp)
