The bodies of 17 Guatemalan migrants and 6 Hondurans who died in a fire at a detention center in Mexico at the end of March were repatriated by plane on Tuesday.
In Honduras, the remains were handed over to the families by representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after being dropped off at the Honduran Air Force headquarters at Palmerola airport, about fifty kilometers north of Tegucigalpa.
“The government of the Republic has asked the Mexican government to carry out an exhaustive investigation into these events and to condemn the perpetrators of this crime,” the Honduran Foreign Ministry said in a statement, regarding the fire that caused 40 dead, March 27, in Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico.
The bodies of the 6 Honduran migrants were transferred from Mexico on a Mexican Air Force plane, which had previously stopped in Guatemala, where the remains of 17 of the 19 Guatemalan migrants who died in the same fire were also repatriated.
The coffins will mostly be buried in indigenous areas of western Guatemala.
According to Mexican authorities, the fire was started by a migrant who set fire to a mattress in the cell he shared with 67 other men to protest a possible deportation.
A total of 19 Guatemalans, 7 Salvadorans, 7 Venezuelans, 6 Hondurans and one Colombian lost their lives.
Security camera footage showed that once the fire broke out, neither immigration staff nor security guards came to the aid of migrants locked in their cells when the fire started.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Búcaro said his country and Mexican authorities would work hand in hand “to obtain a trial, punishment and reparations” for the tragedy.
On Tuesday, the Mexican Attorney General’s office announced that two directors of the Mexican National Institute for Migration (INM) were under criminal investigation for “omissions” in two cases: that of the Juárez tragedy at the end of March and that of another “similar” incident that occurred on March 31, 2020 in Tenosique, Tabasco (south), which left one dead and 14 injured.
The Mexican government began the repatriation of those who died in the Juárez tragedy on Friday, with the transfer of the bodies of a Colombian and seven Salvadorans who died.
The bodies of two other migrants, whose identity has not yet been confirmed by DNA tests, will also be repatriated in the coming days, Búcaro said.
In the investigation opened for homicide, five people were arrested, including the migrant accused of starting the fire. The other four people arrested are INM officials and a security guard.
The sixth suspect, another guard, is still at large.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has guaranteed that the case will not go “unpunished”.
12/04/2023 15:05:14 – Guatemala (AFP) – © 2023 AFP