MEXICO CITY, Mexico -- Police in the western state of Nayarit arrested 14 presumed members of a cult whose leaders conducted human sacrifices to gain protection for their drug trafficking activities, authorities said Thursday.
The suspects were arrested on suspicion of drug dealing and presumed to be members of a religious sect run by Olayo Soto.
Alejandro Maldonado of the Federal Attorney General's office said nine of those arrested were charged Thursday with drug offenses and illegal possession of weapons, and five minors were handed to state juvenile corrections officials.
Maldonado, who is in charge of anti-narcotics activities in Nayarit, said 10 federal agents were conducting a drug search by helicopter in the Mezquital Valley -- 420 miles northwest of Mexico City -- when they discovered marijuana plantations on land owned by Soto. They arrested Soto and 13 others.
Soto, 65, who reportedly paid the others $7 a day to work on his drug plantations, also is suspected of killing his two sons and a daughter, all between ages 20 and 25.
Maldonado denied reports that police had found a common grave containing 30 corpses, but said Soto admitted to being the leader of a cult that carried out human sacrifices in a cave on a nearby mountain.
He added that police had found blood traces in the cave that matched the blood types of Soto's two sons.
One of the detainees said Soto had sacrificed more than 30 people 'to offer their lives and blood to the devil to protect our drug trafficking activities,' Maldonado told United Press International.
Juan Granados, a judicial police officer in Nayarit, was quoted in the Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada as saying cult members 'hung up the victims by the head, slit their throats, drained the blood into jugs and offered it to the devil.'
Granados said the ceremonies were carried out in front of a ceramic monkey, a god of the Palo Mayombe religion of African origin.
At the cave, police also found a foot-long, blood-stained dagger and a number of arrows with blood dried on them, Granados said.
The Mexico City daily newspaper El Universal said Soto's brother Juan had escaped with the ceramic monkey and was still at large.
