Mexico: Investigation underway after severed heads and human remains found
Motorists have made a grisly discovery of severed human heads and remains on a road linking two Mexican states.
According to the AFP, authorities were called to the scene where they found six heads along a thoroughfare in central Mexico.
The remains were first reported by drivers using a road that links the states of Puebla and Tlaxcala, the prosecutors said.
A spokesman added the extreme violence is rarely see in the area.
Another head and other human remains were found in the western city of Colima, news outlets said Tuesday.
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Mexican authorities have located six severed heads in the country's central region. Picture: Getty Images
The heads found in Tlaxcala were those of men, the prosecutor's office said as it announced an investigation into the shocking crime.
Local media reported a pamphlet was found which blamed the violence on a settling of scores between gangs that rob fuel.
Both Puebla and Tlaxcala are to home to gangs that deal in drugs and fuel.
But these states are new to this kind of extreme violence more common in other parts of Mexico, which is plagued by drug-related brutality.
However in recent months bodies have been found in areas near the border between the two states.
Extreme violence – such as decapitation – is more common in northern states and along the Pacific coast where drug cartels operate in both.
On June 30 authorities found 20 bodies along a road in northwest Sinaloa state, five of them headless, as violence reached new heights.
The bodies of four of the victims were hung from a bridge on a main road.
Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico's major drug-trafficking groups, has been locked in an almost year-long conflict with another one of its factions.
Drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Picture: Alfredo Estrella/AFP
The carnage escalated following the arrest of Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, an infamous drug lord who was arrested in July 2024 when he arrived into the US.
Zambada, aged in his 70s, had allegedly worked alongside Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman operating the cartel before the latter was sentenced to life in a Colorado jail.
'El Mayo' accused Guzman's son of betrayal by alerting authorities of his arrival to the US.
Zambada is expected to plead guilty to drug trafficking charges when he faces a New York court next week, after the US Justice Department said it would not see the death penalty.
The Mexican army was sent to Sinaloa state in a bid to prevent further violence between cartels but have struggled to stop the deadly carnage. Picture: Ivan Medina / AFP
Mexico's government had deployed thousands of soldiers to Sinaloa in a bid to end the violence that has left a reported 3000 people dead or missing.
However, they have struggled to put an end to the conflict.
In March 2022 six heads and other body parts were found on the roof of a car on the main street of Chilapa in the southern state of Guerrero.
Around 480,000 people have died in drug-related violence around Mexico since 2006, when the government deployed federal troops to take on the country's powerful drug cartels.
Originally published as Investigation underway after severed heads and human remains found in Mexico
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Jabbour says it was a 'perfect storm' for his career. Keelty lost his job as the inspector-general of the Murray Darling Basin Commission – what he describes as the 'best job I ever had'. 'It's all but broken me. All for trying to do the right thing by everyone,' Keelty told me. 'But I'm not looking for sympathy, but I am looking for honesty and I am looking for the truth to come out.' I'd like the same thing. Four years ago, in 2021, I lodged my freedom of information request. I asked for the statements to Operation Geranium of Colvin, Gaughan and internal investigations head Nigel Ryan, as well as the final report. The police knocked my request back, citing a spaghetti of clauses and sub-clauses. Large parts of the documents were irrelevant, the police said. They would prejudice the enforcement of a law, have a 'substantial adverse effect on the management of personnel', damage the 'proper and efficient conduct of the operations of an agency', and involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information. They then turned down an internal review. The official appeal body (the Office of the Information Commissioner) dodged the question and referred it to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The tribunal member heard the case and knocked us back there, too. So profoundly supportive of the police position was he that he added a new reason for refusal that they hadn't thought of. Each time the police argued their case, the reasons for denying my request morphed. We appealed to the Federal Court. There, a full bench of three judges – who had read the documents – thoroughly rebuked the tribunal member and demolished the police arguments. Many parts of the documents could safely be released, and there was a clear and over-riding public interest. 'To lose sight of that would be to lose sight of the principal object of the FOI Act,' said the key judgment. 'Scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of the activities of the Commonwealth government and its agencies, and the conduct of those performing functions on their behalf, is a public purpose.' Loading To sort out the details, the judges referred the case back to the tribunal. It had been so long that, in the meantime, the tribunal's name had changed. This gave the police one more chance to oppose us. So, of course, they have. This time, they're arguing that to release these documents would deter everyone in the AFP who sees corruption from coming forward to report it. So ridiculous is this contention that it prompted Keelty to call us. As a result, we now know a lot more about these events than we did. We know why Keelty made the dreadful misstep of agreeing to meet Roberts-Smith. We have Keelty's account of whom he spoke to before that meeting, and a plausible theory of how Roberts-Smith came to the view he was under investigation. We know whom Roberts-Smith called after the meeting and, roughly, what he said. And we've seen the previously secret note that kicked off the internal investigation. We also know that the police are protecting neither Keelty nor Jabbour by keeping these documents under wraps. Both men rejected requests from the police lawyers to help them in the freedom of information case, and both are now on the record saying they want the documents released. Jabbour told me: 'My hope, to be honest, is that the experience isn't forgotten and can serve as a catalyst for genuine reform. Because I think the integrity framework shouldn't be vulnerable to weaponisation, which I think is what has occurred in this case.' Keelty has sworn an affidavit supporting our case. To his credit, so far, the tribunal's president has shown little patience for the AFP's dissembling. He told their lawyers last week he wanted to see all the documents – including ones they were withholding from him. They should, he warned, employ 'common sense'. That would be nice. What we're still not sure about is why they're fighting so hard. Initially, I thought they were protecting a wrongdoer. Now I'm inclined to think they're covering for good old-fashioned incompetence. Perhaps they're opposing this – at the expense of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of taxpayer dollars – out of pure embarrassment. And the FOI Act has something very clear to say about that: s.11 B 4 (a): 'The following factors must not be taken into account in deciding whether access to the document [is in] the public interest: … Embarrassment … or cause a loss of confidence.' Loading The FOI battle returns to the tribunal for a hearing next week. And as for Roberts-Smith? Well, a further catastrophic AFP stuff-up in the war crimes investigation – unrelated to Keelty or Jabbour – meant the federal police were taken off the case five years after it began. A whole new prosecution body, the Office of the Special Investigator, was established to carry it forward.
