Soldiers in Mexico have uncovered a mass grave containing at least 18 bodies in the northern state of Nuevo Leon. Vanessa Buschschluter of our America's desk reports.
Security forces said an
anonymous
tip-off led them to the site which is almost the size of a football pitch. Investigators">Investigators said they believed drug gangs had used the remote spot to torture and execute their victims. Police are now using diggers to search for more bodies. In">In the past weeks, two other such graves have been discovered in Nuevo Leon which is at the centre of a violent battle between rival drug gangs. Over the past three years, more than 200 people have disappeared in the border state.
The former British Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he won't appear at a Senate hearing in the United States on the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The hearing is to examine whether lobbying by the oil company BP had a role in Mr Megrahi's release last year. Mr Straw said the decision had been taken by the Scottish government, and he could
throw no light on
the matter.
"I
literally
had nothing whatever to do with that. It was an entirely separate decision for the Scottish justice secretary. He and Alex Salmond, the first minister in Scotland, made quite clear that they had no representations from the British government or from BP
in respect of
that, and as it happens, I learnt about Mr Megrahi's imminent release