Massacre of Mormons in Mexico - forces arrest suspected masterminds

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Heavily armed: forces in Mexico (archive image)

Photo: Marco Ugarte / AP

The mastermind behind the massacre of children and women in a Mormon community in Mexico was arrested around a year after the crime.

Military and secret service forces had arrested the man and two other alleged members of a criminal organization in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, the country's attorney general said on Wednesday.

Suspected members of a drug cartel fired numerous shots at three SUVs on a country road a good 100 kilometers south of the US border on November 4, 2019.

Six children between the ages of eight months and eleven years and three women were killed.

The victims were both Mexican and US citizens.

You belonged to a Mormon congregation whose founders settled in northwestern Mexico after the main Mormon church abolished polygamy in their homeland in the United States in the late 19th century.

A total of 17 suspects have now been arrested in connection with the crime.

According to media reports, the main suspect is a regional head of La Línea, the combat unit of the Juárez cartel.

The man is known as "El Mudo" (The Mute) or "El 32".

"There is still so much to clear up," said Adrian LeBaron, who had lost a daughter and three grandchildren in the attack. "But at least these arrests are progress in this case."

The Mexican investigators initially suggested that the women and children had got caught between the lines by chance during turf wars between two organized crime groups, La Línea and Los Salazar.

But there are doubts about this - the exact background of the murders is still unclear.

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bbr / dpa / Reuters