Mexican authorities have been searching for almost a week for five young men who disappeared. On Thursday, police in the state of Jalisco announced that they had found the five murdered, with their bodies burned to ashes.
The deaths sparked immediate and unusual anger in Mexico, which has grown accustomed to brutal killings in the shadow of drug cartels’ wars for power, territory and wealth.
Police found four skulls on private land as well as burned body parts in Tlajomulco. The discovery was made after the young men’s abandoned vehicle was found, one of them burnt out and with a body in the charred wreckage.
But the anger took on unusual proportions in part because of images shared on social media, which showed kneeling men with bound hands being attacked with punches and stabs. Authorities have attempted to verify the authenticity of the images; but the findings that followed an anonymous tip appear to confirm the sequence of events.