**MEXICO CITY**
Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero revealed the prosecution's first report Wednesday on a mass burial site found in western Mexico, believed to have been operated as a mass murder and training center by a drug cartel.
The horrors at the "Izaguirre" ranch in Teuchitlan were uncovered on March 5 by a group of searchers and organizations dedicated to looking for missing people in Mexico. Searchers found the remains of an unknown number of victims, hundreds of personal belongings, and what appeared to be incinerators used to burn the bodies of the victims of the cartel.
Searchers, journalists, and human rights defenders have suspected the 10,000-square meter (2.5 acres) area was used by the New Generation Jalisco Cartel as a safe house where abduction victims were forcibly tortured to join the ranks of the cartel.
There are 200 people suspected to have been murdered at the site.
Manero criticized the investigation that state authorities from Jalisco have carried out since the discovery of the ranch.
The ranch was first reported to authorities in September 2024, during an operation by the National Guard where 10 people were arrested on suspicion of being active members of the Jalisco Cartel. Searchers were allowed into the foreclosed property to look for missing persons.
According to Gertz, state authorities made severe omissions and mistakes since the discovery last year.
"They did not conduct the tracking of the evidence, nor the identification of everything found that was abandoned at the site. The vehicles found were not properly processed, three of which had already been stolen. The total exploration of the place was not carried out, nor was the identification of the fingerprints," he said.
Gertz was also critical of the neglect by the state's prosecution regarding the clear collusion of local police with the cartel which contradicts statements by those who were taken to the site by the cartel.
Links, cover-ups, and participation of local authorities with the local cartels operating in the region have not been precisely established, despite several people who were kidnapped in that property already declaring so," he said.
Regarding incinerators found at the ranch, Gertz said state authorities did not carry out the necessary chemical and forensic exams.
"The property was left abandoned, and the immediate statements of the mayor and the main authorities, as well as those of the neighbors, were not taken," said Manero.
The state attorney general said the Jalisco government should send all information on the case to the federal government to continue with the investigation.
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