Three more detained in Mexico mass grave case

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities detained three more suspects Thursday in the killing of 13 young people who were found in a mass grave after their kidnapping from a Mexico City bar.

The bodies were unearthed in a ranch outside the capital in August, three months after a daylight kidnapping just steps from the city's main boulevard in a case that dented the capital's reputation as a relative oasis from the nation's drug-related violence.

The federal attorney general's office handed the three suspects over to city prosecutors, showing them with their heads bowed as they were led to a police truck in front of television cameras.

Renato Sales, a federal prosecutor, said the three suspects - Jonathan Robles Gonzalez, alias "El Jhony," Pedro Francisco Paz Lopez, alias "Pancho Pulgas," and Fernando Fernandez Sanchez, alias "El Pez" - were "probable culprits" in the kidnapping and murder of the 13 victims.

Seven other people have been detained in the case, including two bar owners.

Prosecutors say the mass kidnapping was ordered as revenge for the murder of a drug dealer in the trendy Condesa district amid a dispute between two city gangs.

Two of the victims are sons of men serving time for being part of a gang from the city's rough Tepito neighborhood, but relatives deny that any of the kidnap victims were involved in criminal activities.