In Case of Missing Students, Hillside Mass Graves Point to a Death March
In Case of Missing Students, Hillside Mass Graves Point to a Death March
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLDOCT. 8, 2014
[font size=1]The badly burned bodies of 28 people were found last weekend in a mass grave on a hillside in the outskirts of the city.
Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times [/font]
IGUALA, Mexico — The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city under the thumb of organized crime.
Soon the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.
Along this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then marched to their deaths.
That is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in custody revealed the horrors committed here.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/world/americas/in-case-of-mexicos-missing-students-hillside-mass-graves-point-to-a-death-march.html?_r=0