Leader of group searching for 43 missing Mexican students killed

Miguel Angel Jimenez, a leader of a community police organization, was found shot to death inside the taxi he drove on Saturday night in the rural outskirts of Acapulco, according to local police.

Mr Jimenez Blanco’s body was found in the taxi he owned.

A political activist who played a prominent role in the search for 43 students and other missing people in southern Mexico has been killed.

Along with driving the cab, he was a member of a area people police group. The person did not want to be identified, fearing retribution.

The government has said the students were abducted by police and handed over to drug traffickers who allegedly killed the students and burnt their bodies. The effort expanded to include hundreds of others who disappeared. Guerrero is a major opium-producing state and a battleground for a number of criminal gangs.

In the town of Xaltianguis, Jimenez led a group of more than 100 women who took up weapons and began patrolling the streets. “This area, we have always said it, it’s a cemetery”, he said in an interview last December.

Jimenez had worked with families of the disappeared to find information and evidence, which he had then passed on to the authorities. Faced by what they felt was authorities’ indifference and lack of action, they began digging in the dry, dusty hills looking for bodies and clues.

Requested if Jimenez’s demise would have an effect on the way forward for the search events within the hills, at present on maintain through the wet season, Vergara replied: “They’ve killed Miguel – we don’t know why, perhaps due to the searches, as we have been placing the warmth on the federal government”.