MOSCOW, November 15 (Sputnik) — The body of a Roman Catholic priest from Uganda has been found dead in southwestern Mexico in a mass grave. The authorities, who found the body, are searching for the 43 missing trainee teachers feared to have been massacred, reports Reuters.
The priest, who went missing in May, was identified as John Ssenyondo. His body was excavated about a week ago and identified by the recovered skull as well as dental records, the state attorney general's office told Reuters.
"It was found in a mass grave with six other bodies," said a spokesperson for the diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, in the troubled southwestern state of Guerrero. It is the same area where the government says the trainee teachers were abducted in late September by corrupt police in alliance with a drug gang.The priest John Ssenyondo had been serving in area of Guerrero since 2010. He was apparently abducted by armed men six months ago after he refused to baptize the daughter of a local gangster.
The grave was located by federal police who were looking for 43 students who went missing in the area on 26 September. The abduction of the trainee teachers caused outrage in Mexico and impelled a nationwide search. On Thursday, the parents of the missing students began a bus tour across Mexico to demand the investigation to be sped up.
The protests began in Ayotzinapa, home to the teacher-training college where the missing group had studied. The group had travelled to the nearby town of Iguala on 26 September to take part in a protest against job discrimination and was abducted from there, reports BBC.
Earlier this month DNA tests were carried out showing that the bodies in the hidden grave near the town of Ocotitlan, where Father Ssenyondo’s body was found, showed that the students were not buried there.
According to the BBC, Mexico's Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that suspected gangsters had confessed to killing the missing students and burning their bodies in a waste disposal site. But the singed remains found in the site could not be identified and were sent to a laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria, on Wednesday for testing.
The government has arrested more than 70 people following the disappearance of the students from the southwestern city of Iguala. A judge in Guerrero has charged the city's former mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, accused of being the mastermind behind the students' disappearance, with the murder of six people killed in clashes between the trainees, police and masked gunmen on the night of September 26.
