COATZACOALCOS (Mexico) – Mexican authorities yesterday said two officials in the violence-racked eastern state of Veracruz have been fired for returning the remains of a missing person to relatives in plastic bags.
Activists reacted with dismay after the remains of 30-year-old Eladio Aguirre Chable were delivered to his sister in black bin liners by a prosecutor and the head of a municipal attorney-general’s office.
An investigation has been launched into whether the public servants broke the law with a violation of human and legal rights, said state Attorney-General Veronica Hernandez in a video published on social media.
A group of relatives of missing persons called Madres en Busqueda de Coatzacoalcos, which denounced the case over the weekend, described the treatment given to the family as “cruel, inhuman and degrading”.
Chable, whose remains were found on Friday, disappeared in Veracruz last May, when he visited his parents from the Caribbean resort city of Cancun, where he worked.
The eastern state is the scene of a deadly turf war between rival drug cartels.
Around 300,000 people have been killed and more than 80,000 reported missing since the government deployed the military in the war on drugs in 2006. – AFP, March 30, 2021
