Mexico officials fired for returning human remains in plastic bags

Coatzacoalcos, Mexico: Mexican authorities said Monday that two officials in the violence-racked eastern state of Veracruz had been fired for returning the remains of a missing person to relatives in plastic bags.

Activists reacted with dismay after the remains of 30-year-old Eladio Aguirre Chable were delivered to his sister in black bin liners by a prosecutor and the head of a municipal attorney general's office.

An investigation has been launched into whether the public servants broke the law with a violation of human and legal rights, Veracruz Attorney General Veronica Hernandez said in a video published on social media.

A group of relatives of missing persons called Madres en Busqueda de Coatzacoalcos, which denounced the case over the weekend, described the family's treatment as "cruel, inhuman and degrading."

Chable, whose remains were found on Friday, disappeared in Veracruz in May 2020, when he visited his parents from the Caribbean resort city of Cancun where he worked.

The eastern state is the scene of a deadly turf war between rival drug cartels.

Around 300,000 people have been killed and more than 80,000 have been reported as missing since the government deployed the military in the war on drugs in 2006.