Eight Now Under Arrest in Mexico’s Sicilia Case

Jesús Cárdenas Pérez and César Arturo Galindo confessed to have participated in the murder of Juan Francisco Sicilia and six other people.

Four more people have been arrested in connection with the March 27 killings of Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of well-known poet Javier Sicilia, and six other young men in the central Mexican state of Morelos, bringing to eight the number of suspects detained in the case, officials said.

Eight suspects have been arrested in the course of the investigation, but “it’s four who are directly linked to the kidnapping of the seven victims,” Morelos Attorney General’s Office spokesman Ricardo Najera said in a press conference.

Jesus Cardenas Perez and Cesar Arturo Galindo Perez were arrested Sunday in the city of Jiutepec in connection with the slaying of 24-year-old Juan Francisco Sicilia and the other young men.

Enrique Rudecindo Guzman and Alberto Millan Ramos were detained last week during an auto theft investigation and their fingerprints matched some of those found in the vehicle that contained the bodies, an official told Efe.

Morelos Gov. Marco Adame Castillo and Federal Police regional security coordinator Luis Cardenas Palomino also attended Monday’s press conference.

The first suspect identified in the investigation was a patsy whose name was given to police by criminals to throw them off the trail, Cardenas Palomino said.

That suspect, Rodrigo Elizalde, was left by criminals inside the trunk of an automobile on April 15 “with the goal of confusing the authorities,” Cardenas Palomino said.

Elizalde provided information to investigators that attorneys for the victims’ families said contradicted information that police and the families had about the killings.

Cardenas and Galindo were arrested at a house in Jiutepec, where Federal Police officers seized a vehicle, two rifles, ammunition and eight stolen license plates, the Public Safety Secretariat said Monday.

Authorities allege that Cardenas is a hired gun who dealt drugs in Jiutepec, while Galindo also sold drugs and guarded cartel safe houses.

Cardenas, who got out of prison last year after serving nearly a decade for kidnapping, confessed that he carried out the murders of Sicilia and the other young men with Galindo, Julio de Jesus Radilla Hernandez and Jose Luis Luquin Delgado, among others.

Radilla, the suspected leader of the Pacifico Sur drug cartel in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, and Luquin were also mentioned in other testimony gathered by investigators.

Juan Francisco Sicilia and the other six men were kidnapped outside the Obsesion bar “in retaliation for a dispute a few days earlier,” Cardenas told investigators.

The young men were murdered on Radilla’s orders at the house in Jiutepec and were taken to the city of Temixco, where the bodies were found, Galindo said.

Javier Sicilia, considered one of Mexico’s best writers, reacted to his son’s killing by organizing protests against the drug-related violence that has claimed more than 36,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006.

The poet and journalist has called on Mexicans to participate in a national march this week against violence and in opposition to President Felipe Calderon’s war against the cartels.

The march will leave Cuernavaca on Thursday for Mexico City, with the marchers staying silent during the 85-kilometer (53-mile) trek.

The march is expected to take three days and end in Mexico City’s main Zocalo plaza, Sicilia said.

The poet has rallied Mexicans who are fed up with the drug-related violence that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in the past few years and a government strategy that has done little to stem the killing.

“The reality of each day is that we have people dead, we are afraid, the streets belong to organized crime,” Sicilia said last week.

The poet criticized both Calderon’s decision to militarize the war on drugs and the criminalization of innocent victims and their families.

Source: EFE