Eight Bodies Found, May Be Missing Students in Mexico

UPDATE ( POLICE KILLED STUDENTS )

IGUALA, Mexico – At least eight bodies were found in clandestine graves discovered on the weekend in the southern Mexican city of Iguala, officials with the Guerrero state government confirmed to Efe on Sunday.

A state government spokesman said that eight bodies had been found by Saturday evening, “but we don’t know if they belong to (some of) the 43 young (teacher trainees)” who disappeared last weekend after attacks on students that killed six and wounded 25.

Regarding the versions broadcast by media outlets that the bodies were burned, the official said that he did not know the condition of the remains adding that the investigation will continue near a hill in the village of Pueblo Viejo, where the graves were found thanks to information provided by several people under arrest.

Federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation of the disappearance of the 43 teacher trainees in Iguala, the Attorney General’s Office said in an announcement made on Saturday just hours after initial reports came out that clandestine graves had been found.

Forensic experts are in Guerrero to examine the remains found in the mass graves, Criminal Investigations Agency director Tomas Zeron said.

“A group of investigators and federal Attorney General’s Office agents” will be overseeing the investigation, Zeron said.

Relatives of the 43 missing students called Saturday for a nationwide march to protest the slow pace of the investigation and demand that authorities locate their loved ones.

In a gathering with the media at the teacher training college in the rural community of Ayotzinapa, where the young people were studying, the families said they would march on Wednesday to demand that investigators determine what happened on the night of Sept. 26-27.

The students went missing after a night of violence in Iguala – a city in the crime-plagued state of Guerrero – in which six people were killed, including three students of the training college for future primary-school instructors, and 25 others were injured.

The murky series of events included an attack on a bus carrying members of a Third-Division soccer team.

Twenty-two municipal police officers suspected of firing at the students for reasons yet unknown have been arrested, although the involvement of organized crime elements has not been ruled out.

Some witnesses said the 43 missing students were shoved into police vans by the same officers who had attacked them. The students came under fire from the police while riding in private buses they had illegally taken to return to their homes after a fundraising drive.

Mob Kills 2 Men Who Tried to Rob Bus in Central Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Two men who allegedly tried to rob a bus were beaten to death this weekend by passengers and townspeople in central Mexico, media reports said.

The two men were caught and beaten by residents of Tablas del Pozo, a community outside the city of Ecatepec, the El Universal newspaper reported.

Ecatepec is in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Police officers were finally able to pull the men away from the mob, but the two suspects died after more than 100 townspeople punched, kicked, stoned and clubbed them.

The incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. Friday when five men boarded a San Pedro-Santa Clara company bus in San Andres de la Cañada, drew firearms and ordered the passengers to hand over their belongings.

Townspeople spotted the men, realized what had happened and chased them.

Three of the suspects managed to get away, but the other two were cornered and beaten for several minutes.

Police eventually arrived on the scene and transported the two men to a hospital, where they died.

Residents often take the law into their own hands in Mexico, claiming that they do not trust police and are fed up with the high crime rate.

Eric Holder Video ( haha )

Iran ( Demonstrators rally to raise awareness for imprisoned student Omid Kokabee)

A group of demonstrators gathered Wednesday on the RLM bridge to raise awareness for Omid Kokabee, a former UT physics graduate student who has been imprisoned in Iran for almost four years.

The group gathered in the shade of the building Kokabee would have returned to for class after visiting his family in Iran. Physics professor Herbert Berk spoke at the demonstration about the circumstances of Kokabee’s incarceration.

“It’s hard to understand what it was, and there was no trial to really shed any light because, at the trial, the judge looked at him and declared him guilty and put him in jail for 10 years,” Berk said.

Berk serves as chairman for the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, an organization that fights for imprisoned scientists. He said the reasons for Kokabee’s imprisonment are unusual.

“He was declared innocent of some of the [original] charges, but then they convicted him of conspiring with the United States government and getting illegal income, which is, as far as we can tell, the income from being a TA here,” Berk said.

Berk said Kokabee has lost weight and has come down with different medical afflictions while in the Iranian prison system.

U.S. Court Orders Closure of 13 Texas Abortion Clinics

AUSTIN, Texas – Thirteen abortion clinics in Texas have closed their doors after a legal battle with the state authorities who toughened sanitary standards a year ago for the centers, local press reported.

The clinics shut down on Thursday following the decision by a federal appellate court in New Orleans, which has jurisdiction in Texas, which cleared the way for the new abortion law to go into effect.

The law was annulled in late August by another court but Texas officials appealed to the federal chamber.

With the closings of the 13 clinics, the second most populous state in the country, with 76 million people, will have eight legal abortion centers in the four main cities, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.

The original law was to go into effect on Sept. 1 but federal Judge Lee Yeakel annulled it, ruling that it was unconstitutional for women of child-bearing age to be more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) from an abortion clinic.

But Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, a Republican running for governor, appealed the ruling.

Federal Forces Join Search for Missing Students in Southern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Mexican Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio said Thursday that federal security forces are assisting authorities in the southern state of Guerrero in their search for dozens of teacher trainees who have been missing since late last week, while also calling on the state governor to speed up the investigation.

Some of the four dozen students who have been missing since last Friday were taken away by municipal police, according to witnesses, while it has been reported that others may have been kidnapped by members of a criminal gang.

“Time is of the essence. There are lots of things to clear up and local authorities need to do their part, expedite their processes so we know what happened there and punish those responsible,” Osorio told Radio Formula in reference to the attacks on students in the city of Iguala, where six people died and 25 others were wounded.

He expressed his “enormous concern” and said Mexican army soldiers and Federal Police officers are “already visiting some places” in an effort to locate the missing students, estimated to number between 38 and 43 according to local authorities.

The young people who came under attack last Friday night after seizing some private buses “were merely part of a student movement,” the government secretary said.

Referring to the attackers, municipal police were involved but “organized crime elements also presumably participated” in two instances, he said, reiterating the need for a thorough probe to clarify the murky series of events that included an attack on a bus carrying members of a third-division soccer team.

It remains to be determined who instructed the police to fire on the students, Osorio said, calling on Gov. Angel Aguirre to order an accelerated investigation to “get at the exact truth.”

The Guerrero state Human Rights Commission said Tuesday that 13 of the students reported missing in the wave of violence had turned up, reducing the list of missing students to 43.

“They have been found in different parts of the state, some in their homes, others went to the Normal (School in Ayotzinapa), where their classmates are,” commission chairman Ramon Navarrete told Efe.

Mexico’s normal schools train future primary-school instructors.

“When they have clashes, in an effort to protect themselves and evade the police, they disperse” to make it more difficult for the security forces to find them, Navarrete said.

On Monday, classmates of the missing students pelted the state capitol with rocks and demanded Aguirre’s resignation.

Some 3,000 students, teachers and family members of the missing young people marched peacefully to the legislative building in Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s capital.

The protesters demanded justice for the six people killed in last weekend’s violence in Iguala, three of whom were education students.

Mexican Police Nab Drug Kingpin Hector Beltran Leyva

In a joint operation, police and soldiers nabbed Beltran Leyva on Wednesday at a seafood restaurant in the central town of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato state, Criminal Investigations Agency director Tomas Zeron said

MEXICO CITY – Mexican police and soldiers have arrested suspected drug kingpin Hector Beltran Leyva, who is accused of running a drug network that for years smuggled vast amounts of cocaine from South America to the United States and Europe, authorities said.

In a joint operation, police and soldiers nabbed Beltran Leyva on Wednesday at a seafood restaurant in the central town of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato state, Criminal Investigations Agency director Tomas Zeron said.

Not a single shot was fired.

Unlike other Mexican drug lords, Beltran adopted a low-key lifestyle and avoided ostentatious displays of wealth such as fancy cars, pretending to be a normal businessman involved in real estate and art dealing.

But Zeron said that in fact the suspect headed up the so-called Beltran Leyva cartel, which he ran along with his brothers after the group split off from the notorious Sinaloa cartel in 2009.

Hector took over the organization after his brother and the cartel’s then-chief, Arturo, died in a shootout with Mexican marines in late 2009.

Zeron said Beltran was one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug barons and that the Mexican and U.S. governments had been offering rewards of $2.3 million and $5 million, respectively, for information leading to his capture.

Along with the narcotics charges, Beltran Leyva’s gang is accused of numerous counts of murder, kidnapping and torture carried out in central Mexico, and he is also wanted in the United States on arms and ammunition-smuggling charges.