Mexico City, Mexico-
Four men were arrested Thursday on suspicion of involvement in the killings of scores of women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.
Police said statements and confessions by the men, some of whom were bus drivers, implicated them in six killings committed since June. Prosecutors have until today to charge the suspects, one of whom was identified as a US citizen.
One of the four suspects was released on an injunction or constitutional appeal, the government news agency Notimez reported. According to police, more than 100 women, mostly teenagers, have been killed since 1993 in Juarez, a city of 1 million people across the border from El Paso. Independent groups say the number could be as high as 192. The victims were raped or sexually brutalized in 54 cases.
The arrests are based on information given by a 5th suspect, Jesus Manuel Guardado Marquez. He was taken into custory over the weekend in the neighboring state of Durango on charges of raping and attempting to murder a 14 year old girl in June aboard his bus.
He reportedly gave police the names of as many as eight men who may have been involved in the killings, saying that the attacks occurred aboard buses.
Many of the victims worked at foreign-owned assembly plants known as maquiladoras, and used buses for transportation.
In Thursday court hearings, Guardado Marquez confessed to raping and nearly killing the 14 year old girl.
Police said Guardado Marquez has told them he killed four women in Juarez. Several of the suspects were allegedly present at some of those killings and the slayings of three other women.
A suspect who a government spokesman said was a US citizen told prosecutors he and the others were paid to carry out killings.
The suspect said an Egyptian man who was sentenced to 30 years in prision in March for the kidnapping and rape of a 17 year old woman had paid them to kill women, presumably to lead suspicion away from him.
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