Mexico: Police re-arrest suspected massacre mastermind

Mexican police rearrested the person allegedly behind a 1997 massacre in Chiapas. Authorities from that state said that suspected paramilitary leader Antonio Santiz ordered the killing of 45 natives in Acteal and even provided weapons for the assassins to use.

Witnesses to the massacre are unsure whether the Tzotil natives were murdered due to a supposed allegiance with the Zapatistas or as revenge for a killed priest. Whatever the reason may be, the Tzotil community has been split over the Acteal massacre according to an article from the International Herald Tribune:

A decade after the massacre, the Tzotzil live side by side but divided. In one group, the one that backs the PRI [then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party], many of the men have been sent to prison for the killings. The others, from the Abejas [advocate] group, who live down the road, insist that even more killers are at large.

Meanwhile, Mexico's courts struggle to handle what has grown into one of the country's longest and most complex cases. A dozen judges have been involved in the trials and, now, the appeals of their convictions…

"This is the most complicated case in Mexico," said [professor Javier Angulo] in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas State, as he prepared to appeal the convictions of some of the men. "It's possible that in 10 more years we'll still be talking about what really happened in Acteal."

Sources- International Herald Tribune, Reuters, Xinhua, Associated Press,

Image- libertadlatina.org